Rupert Murdoch promised his shareholders when News Corp (NYSE: NWS). acquired Dow Jones that the company’s content was ripe for premium products—and execs have been signaling for months that something was on the way from the Wall Street Journal. Turns out the first entry—and the only coming in 2009—is a blend of WSJ and Factiva called The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition, a new site billed as a premium business news service. (That description isn’t odd but I would venture to guess a large chunk of the WSJ’s existing subs get it because they think it’s already aimed at professionals. ) WSJ Pro will be available for enterprise users in November, going wider in January. Reuters reports a subscription will run $49 a month, just under $600 a year. For some context within the confusion of WSJ pricing, that’s a little less than the newsstand price of about $610, considerably more than the discounted print subscription of $391, and considerably less than the WSJ.com rate of about $100.

It’s also just under a third of the cost of a real-time Bloomberg Terminal, not an exact comparison but the statement by Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones, suggests strongly they want WSJ Pro to be viewed not as a substitute for their own basic service but as an alternative to Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters (NSDQ: TRIN) terminals: “We are not imprisoned by a terminal and are thus able to produce a more contemporary web-based news feed tailored to a sector, a company or an asset class.”

So what will subscribers get beyond full access to WSJ.com?

—A high level of curation. Alan Murray, executive editor for online, told me the site has a “significant editorial element, adding, “the Factiva tools are incredibly powerful. We’re putting our editors between them and you.” . Six sections will be edited continuously—pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, media & marketing, telecommunications and technology. There are also 30-plus industry topic pages.
—Access to Factiva’s 17,000-plus sources plus some Dow Jones editorial content that isn’t part of WSJ.com.
—Use of Factiva SmartSearch for “filtered” searches of one year of Factica archives and t