Thirty years after its establishment as The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong in 1976, the paper has been reborn today as The Wall Street Journal Asia, in a smaller, tabloid format. The European edition of WSJ has also been renamed and relaunches in tabloid format today, with publishers, Dow Jones & Co, claiming the changes will make articles more accessible to readers.
Dow Jones says the changes will enable its international editions to better serve the needs of its highly mobile international readership as well as its advertisers. They are part of a regime of changes which the company says will save it approximately US$17m annually from next year.
The redesigned papers, styled ‘compact’ by WSJ, contain a mixture of in-depth, analytical stories and shorter news pieces presented in a more colourful format and with a new typeface, Exchange.
WSJ joins a growing number of newspapers to reduce their size in response to increasing newsprint costs. Market research has also indicated that many readers prefer smaller papers.
In a letter to WSJ Asia readers, editor Reginald Chua says the format is designed to make it easier to navigate through the paper. Meanwhile, former managing editor, Peter Stein, has been named Hong Kong bureau chief and Ann Podd, a former business editor at the New York Daily News has been named managing editor in Hong Kong.
The US edition of WSJ is also to shrink slightly in width from January 2007, though not to tabloid size, bringing the Journal in line with other major American newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and USA Today.
