Some people firmly believe that LexisNexis has the best news coverage of the two major online legal vendors. But Westlaw could always tout the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones content, very high value stuff not available on LexisNexis. Not for long....by March 2005, LexisNexis will be the exclusive provider of Factiva content to the legal market.
Is this bad news for West? Hard to say. That depends upon how well their new source for news, Dialog, holds up to the competition, though it's hard to see how the loss of the Wall Street Journal could be a good thing. Though Westlaw has announced the addition of the New York Times, previously only available on Lexis.
And to top it all off, a recent Newsbreak on the topic indicates that legal customers currently subscribing to Factiva will be required to migrate to Lexis for that content. Factiva direct will no longer be an option for them. It's unclear to me whether this would also apply to the Wall Street Journal Online.
How the Factiva content will be offered via Lexis/Nexis. Will it be a gateway? Integrated with their other news content? I've got more questions than answers. My more immediate concern is that all my Westlaw Intraclips keep on working!
By the way, Genie Tyburski, in her story on this topic, refers to a web site that was new to me, Outsell Now. Very interesting...I quicky added it to my list of RSS feeds!
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