The Wall Street Journal to Combine Sections to Cope With Ad Decline
November 02 2016 - 12:00PM
Dow Jones News
The Wall Street Journal will debut a newly formatted version of
its print edition starting Nov. 14, which will combine several
sections and reduce the size of some coverage areas as the paper
copes with an accelerating industrywide decline in print
advertising.
Editor in chief Gerard Baker announced the changes to staff in a
memo Wednesday. As a result, the paper will feature fewer pages
with less space dedicated to coverage of arts, culture and local
news, but will continue to dedicate about the same amount of space
for business and finance coverage.
"All newspapers face structural challenges and we must move to
create a print edition that can stand on a sound financial footing
for the foreseeable future while our digital horizons continue to
expand," Mr. Baker wrote in the memo.
The restructuring of the print paper will result in the
elimination of some positions. The paper has already offered
buyouts to all staffers and warned of possible layoffs.
The new version of the Journal will feature two bigger sections
on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with a third section on
Mondays and Fridays. The weekend edition of the paper will remain
unchanged.
The paper will combine the Business & Tech and Money &
Investing sections into one section in an effort to save on
production costs. Mr. Baker said the new section "will contain
about the same amount of news space as we have now for business,
technology, financial and markets coverage."
Additionally, the Personal Journal and Arena sections, which
focus on lifestyle, art, sports and culture coverage, will be
combined into a new section called Life & Arts, which will
become part of the A section of the paper.
The Greater New York section will be reduced in size into "a
more concise, focused daily report on life and business in the New
York area," and will also be moved into the A section of the
paper.
The paper will continue to publish Journal Reports and Mansion
as separate sections on Monday and Friday, respectively.
The move comes amid a sharp decline in print advertising that is
hitting publishers across the industry. Ad buying firm GroupM has
projected that global print ad spending will drop 8.7% this year,
the biggest decline since 2009 during the recession.
On Wednesday, New York Times Co. reported a 19% decline in print
ad revenue in the third quarter. USA Today owner Gannett Co. last
week reported a 15% drop in print ad revenue, and Tronc Inc., owner
of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, reported a 13%
decline.
The Journal's parent company, News Corp is scheduled to report
its fiscal first-quarter earnings next week. For the fourth
quarter, News Corp said domestic advertising revenue at the Journal
fell 12% from the same quarter a year earlier.
"I want to stress that these changes and their ramifications for
the newsroom are necessary not just because we must adjust to
changing conditions in the print advertising business, but because
we know from audience research that readers want a more digestible
newspaper," Mr. Baker wrote.
Write to Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 02, 2016 11:45 ET (15:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
New Gannett (NYSE:GCI)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
New Gannett (NYSE:GCI)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024
