Alumnus Crovitz to speak Monday as Marjorie Kovler Visiting Fellow

Alumnus L. Gordon Crovitz (A.B.,’80), a columnist and former publisher at The Wall Street Journal and the University’s 2007-2008 Marjorie Kovler Visiting Fellow, will speak Monday, Feb. 11 at the Graduate School of Business’ Charles M. Harper Center.

Crovitz’s talk, titled “The Media Business in the Digital Age,” is being jointly sponsored by the GSB’s Distinguished Speaker Series and the Marjorie Kovler Visiting Fellows program. Crovitz will speak at 5 p.m. in Room 104 of the Harper center; his lecture is open to the public.

In addition to serving as publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Crovitz also was the executive vice president of Dow Jones & Company and president of its Consumer Media Group. He was responsible for media operations serving consumers, including The Wall Street Journal and its online edition, Barron’s and its online publication, MarketWatch and the company’s other Web properties, as well as its television, video and audio operations. He also oversaw the company’s SmartMoney and Vedomosti joint ventures, and served as a member of the Dow Jones executive committee.

Between October 1998 and February 2006, Crovitz served as senior vice president of Dow Jones and president of the Electronic Publishing Group, overseeing Dow Jones Newswires, Financial Information Services, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing businesses. During his tenure, electronic publishing revenues doubled to more than $500 million, operating income tripled to more than $110 million and the operating margin grew from less than 5 percent to more than 22 percent. In 1999, Crovitz helped found Factiva, a news information resource, which now is No. 1 in its market.

From 1997 to 1998, he was vice president for planning and development, with responsibility for identifying new business strategies and opportunities for Dow Jones and its major business units. Earlier, he spent six years in Hong Kong. In 1992, he was named editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, a Dow Jones magazine. In 1993, he also took on additional responsibilities as the magazine’s publisher and as managing director of Review Publishing Co. He was named managing director of Dow Jones Telerate’s Asia/Pacific region in October 1996. He also served as chairman of the Dow Jones Asia Regional Committee.

In 1986, Crovitz was appointed to The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and became assistant editor for administration for the editorial page. He also launched and wrote the weekly column, “Rule of Law.” During the early 1990s, he also wrote editorials for Barron’s.

He began his career at Dow Jones in 1980 as a summer intern, writing editorials for The Wall Street Journal. He was founding editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels in 1982, and returned to New York in 1984 as an editorial page writer for the U.S. edition of the newspaper.

Crovitz won a Gerald Loeb Award for business commentary in 1990 and first-place awards for commentary in the New York State Bar Association’s competition from 1987 to 1991. He is co-editor of The Fettered Presidency, a book published by the American Enterprise Institute in 1989.

Named one of the top 10 business innovators by the New York Executive Council in 2004, Crovitz serves on the boards of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, the Knight-Bagehot Board of Advisors and Media Technology Ventures, an investment advisory committee.

Crovitz earned a law degree at Wadham College, Oxford University, as a Rhodes scholar, and a J.D. from Yale University Law School.

The GSB’s Distinguished Speaker Series, co-sponsored by the Graduate Business Council, hosts prominent business, government and community leaders who can address important events and issues. The series has brought to campus CEOs, entrepreneurs and community leaders who have spoken on business issues such as recent industry trends and the interaction between government and business, as well as personal issues such as ethics and managing one’s career. Past speakers include Mitt Romney, Ken Chenault, General Peter Pace, Rick Steiner, Betsey Johnson and Jack Welch.