WSJ to add weekly lifestyle and leisure section

Posted by Savita Sauvin on June 8, 2010 at 4:01 PM

As part of its effort to appeal to a wider New York audience, the Wall Street Journal will expand once again, this time by adding a new weekly lifestyle and leisure section, AdAge reported yesterday. The 15-17 page section is scheduled to debut this autumn, and is expected to run on Saturdays.

The move by the WSJ to reach more readers will also place it in direct weekend competition with The New York Times, which dominates on weekends and derives a significant part of its revenue from the advertising-loaded Sunday edition, DailyFinance.com reported. The Journal has already entered into a war with The Times on the local front, with its recently launched Metro section for New Yorkers, soon followed by an ad campaign directly aimed at its rival with slogans like, "Ahead of the times."

This initiative by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to expand the newspaper's coverage beyond the business and financial realm is aimed at increasing readership and attracting advertisers. By pushing outside its domain of financial expertise, the WSJ is also positioning itself to attract more consumer advertising. The WSJ magazine claims to have attracted more than 75 new advertisers, according to AdAge. Former Domino magazine editor-in-chief Deborah Needleman will be providing consultation services for this new section.

"It's a newspaper section but with quite a magazine-y sensibility," Needleman told AdAge. "Part of what we're trying to do is marry the fun and irreverence of the British weekend papers with the utility of a really great service section that addresses luxury in a real-life way. It needs to be a pleasure to read and to look at, but you really have to get something out of it."

Being part of a strategic Murdoch effort directed towards creating more space for consumer advertising, this new weekly section may follow the path laid by the Journal's bi-monthly magazine, which was launched in September 2008, Observer.com reported. In a meeting with Murdoch reviewing prototypes of the new magazine, Sarah Ellison, author of the book, "War at the Wall Street Journal," quoted him as saying. "We've got to lower the advertising rates to make them comparable to The Times's weekly magazine."