WSJ to stop carrying Breakingviews column

By Robert MacMillan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp's Wall Street Journal plans to stop carrying a daily opinion column provided by Breakingviews.com, Hugo Dixon, the founder of the financial news website, said on Friday.

The Journal no longer wants to purchase news from other companies and prefers to buy its way out of a contract that was scheduled to run through 2009, Dixon told Reuters.

Other companies have expressed interest in buying Breakingviews, he said, but declined to give more details. He also would not discuss the financial terms of the Journal contract.

"It definitely is one of the largest clients we have," Dixon said.

Also unclear is whether the Journal will sell its 6 percent stake in Breakingviews. A source familiar with the matter said that it may try.

The decision to get out of the Breakingviews deal comes as the influential business newspaper seeks to expand its own resources for business analysis in print and online, Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Thomson said.

"We have a license to hire great journalists from around the world and hire we will," Thomson, who was appointed after News Corp bought the paper's parent Dow Jones & Co, said in a statement.

Dixon said leaving the Journal would free up the service to seek new partners online, in print and on television.

"We think there's a lot of interest in our brand of independent financial insight," he said.

The cancellation ends an eight-year association that Dow Jones & Co had with Breakingviews, Dixon said. The column first appeared in the European edition of the Journal, before going into the U.S. edition in September 2005. It began appearing daily in January 2007, Dixon said.

"I have great respect for The Wall Street Journal, and I think that it's doing a fine job covering business news," Dixon said.

That comment comes as some Journal reporters and readers bemoan what they see as the paper's increasing appetite for political and general news at the expense of business reports that have been its staple since its birth.

Several Journal editors have disputed this, pointing to recent business stories that received prominent and lengthy coverage, including a three-part series on the fall of investment bank Bear Stearns.

Breakingviews also sells access through online subscriptions. He said the site is experiencing a 95 percent subscriber renewal rate. Its website claims about 15,000 direct subscribers.

The Journal, meanwhile, hired Thorold Baker and Liam Denning to work on its own financial column, "Heard on the Street." The two come from rival paper the Financial Times, which publishes another competing column, "Lex." That paper is owned by Pearson PLC.

(Editing by Andre Grenon)