A year into Dow Jones and WSJ being part of News Corp (NYSE: NWS). the international synergy play across the vast media empire of Rupert Murdoch has started, with a new co-branded business section in The Australian. The Aussie newspaper was the first national newspaper Murdoch launched back in 1964. Though WSJ has some existing relationships with papers outside its empire (like Mint in India), and also of course has international editions, this is the first such effort from WSJ. The co-branding is: “The Australian Business, with the Wall Street Journal.”

Some people aren’t too happy about it, citing WSJ’s poor coverage of the Australian and Asian countries, compared to say FT or Bloomberg. Their point about UK’s The Times not ever launching such a section is probably true…will cause too much furore in the more cloistered confines of British journalism. The opposite is true, though: The Australian does carry some Times’ business stories. Well, never say never…