Newsstand sales of the Wall Street Journal, now owned by Rupert Murdoch, soared last month according to the title’s managing editor Robert Thomson.
He told a media conference that the increase of 20 per cent is partly due to the world financial crisis.
But it may also be because the WSJ has adopted a more newsy look. Its front page is now more like a regular newspaper – and closer in appearance to its biggest American rivals, the New York Times and Washington Post.
It now also runs political stories on the front page, rather than just financial ones.
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Thomson cited internal numbers claiming that the number of unique users logging on to WSJ.com had doubled to 25 million in September.
Thomson conceded that the big story, the economic crisis, had contributed to the uptake in sales. “Obviously the story helps,” he said.
Newsstand sales are usually only five per cent of the WSJ’s total, but they are a good gauge of the paper’s overall vitality.
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Like most American newspapers the paper is suffering a drop in advertising – which some analysts predict will fall at least 10 per cent by next year.
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