—On demand for premium news: Thomson: “Value is all relative.” With regional and local papers focusing their business coverage on personal finance, he asked: “where do people go for high-end international finance news?... We’ve been addressing that issue head on. We’ve seen 2 to 3 percent growth in print subscriptions, and frankly what we are trying to sell is high-end business news. There’s a lot of demand.” On the perception that the WSJ is moving away from business news to attract a bigger audience, he said: “They don’t read the paper.”

—On investing in journalism and globalization: “The problem with the Journal was that as a company, it was under invested in. If you asked which financial company would be best positioned to take advantage of globalization, you’d have to say Dow Jones. Clearly we wanted to create a framework where we could expand globally and digitally.” In China, he said they are growing 400 percent a year, and they are hiring 60 news wire journalists in India. “I think there’s a reason why we are being successful at this time.”

—On buying newspapers today: Thomson said that newspapers are the one area that can really capture the reader’s attention. Unlike the Internet, where people “click, click, click, and then move on,” a newspaper reader is much more intense, and might spend 35 minutes with a publication. “The prominence of the newspaper has in society is high profile, and you have to understand the value of it.”