Wall Street Journal getting skinnier
MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: If you read the Wall Street Journal, you may notice a few changes on Tuesday when you pick up your copy. The most obvious is size. The paper’s losing three inches of width to save around $18 million in newsprint costs. But as Alisa Roth reports, that’s not all.
ALISA ROTH: The smaller format will mean about 10 percent less space for print stories, though that shift will be offset by putting some tables on the Web.
The new print edition will focus more on analysis and exclusive stories. It’ll leave breaking news to the web, where it can be updated frequently.
Journalism professor Phil Meyer is author of the book, “The Vanishing Newspaper, Saving Journalism in the Information Age.”
PHIL MEYER: Newspapers have to figure out how to use the Web. Putting the analysis in print so you can read it at you leisure and having the fast-breaking stuff on the Web makes sense to me.
Newspapers are also trying to find ways to stay profitable. Meyer says the Journal’s redesign seems like a good start.
MEYER: Nobody knows the smart way to do it, so it’s important to try lots of different things.
And the changes mean readers can save a little money, too. Both the print and online editions will be free tomorrow.
In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.
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