Wall Street Journal to cut staff as it consolidates print edition

The Wall Street Journal will debut an overhauled and slimmed-down version of its print product on Nov. 14 in an effort to make the paper more financially viable "for the foreseeable future," Journal editor Gerard Baker announced in an internal memo to staff Wednesday.

The changes, which mostly consist of consolidations and combinations of sections, will come with staff cuts, Baker warned. One section to be hit hard is the newspaper's Greater New York coverage, which will be consolidated to a "more concise, focused daily report on life and business," Baker said.

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"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," Baker wrote in the memo. "As I previously mentioned, there will unfortunately need to be an elimination of some positions as part of this process."

To give a sense of what the section consolidations could mean in terms of staff reductions, consider that Greater New York currently has a team of roughly three dozen, including reporters, editors and production people. The staff was informed in a meeting Wednesday afternoon that since Greater New York will be moving to two pages in the main section of the paper, the number of positions will be trimmed to 16, including 12 reporters, and that everyone will have to reapply to secure one of those jobs.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after the Journal offered all of its 1,500 employees voluntary buyouts to reduce the number of layoffs that Baker said would be inevitable. The move also comes amid anxiety and uncertainty stemming from the publication's financial woes and the way the Journal is handling the changing newspaper industry.

Other sections will also be consolidated. The Journal's Business & Tech and Money & Investing sections will be combined into a new Business & Finance section; similarly, the Journal's Personal Journal and Arena sections will be combined into a section called Life & Arts.

The Saturday edition of the Journal will remain unchanged. Journal Reports will continue to be published on Mondays as a separate section, along with Journal's Mansion section, which will be published as a separate section on Fridays.

"The new paper will maintain and strengthen our core news coverage — the finest reporting on business, finance and economics — but in a sharper, more concise, more coherent and more easily navigable form," Baker wrote in the memo. "... We are uniquely fortunate to have the most ambitious, successful, financially and economically literate readership of any news business anywhere in the world. They are busy people, hungry for the kind of quality reporting and analysis only we can provide. We need to ensure that they get the news they want and need in as concise a daily print form as possible."

Baker had previously announced that a revised version of the newspaper was coming as part of a larger restructuring of the paper's business, driven by sharply declining advertising revenue. Will Lewis, CEO of Dow Jones (which owns the Journal), said last week that advertising was no longer the company's "dominant source of income," due to a dramatic decline in advertising, and Wall Street analysts expect ad revenue to be down more than 12 percent when the company announces its quarterly results.

Baker's full memo to staff is below.

"As I wrote last month, we will shortly be launching a refreshed print edition of The Wall Street Journal. The new paper will maintain and strengthen our core news coverage - the finest reporting on business, finance and economics - but in a sharper, more concise, more coherent and more easily navigable form. And we will continue to provide the most intelligent and eclectic coverage of lifestyle, arts, culture, entertainment, sports and other topics that readers have come to expect from The Journal.

The new paper will debut on Monday, November 14. There are a number of innovations:

— A combined Business & Finance section, comprising the current Business & Tech and Money & Investing sections.

This section will contain comprehensive and in-depth corporate and markets coverage, more clearly signposted and organized. Combined, the new section will contain about the same amount of news space as we have now for business, technology, financial and markets coverage. The front page will combine the most important business and financial news and features. The back page will offer a new daily markets summary together with our celebrated Heard on The Street column. There will be more clearly defined columns within the section for companies, equities, bonds, commodities, currencies and financial institutions and other categories of our business news and there will be several pages of market data. In all, Business & Finance will represent the most detailed and insightful coverage of business news available in any daily print paper anywhere. And of course there will be a strong range of news about companies, markets and economies in the main news section, especially on Page One. Online, on all digital and mobile platforms we will have significantly expanded business and financial news, reporting and analysis, as we accelerate our transformation into a full digital news operation.

— Our uniquely engaging lifestyle, arts, culture, entertainment and sports coverage now featured in Personal Journal and Arena will be combined in a section named Life & Arts, and included in the main news section of the paper every day from Monday to Friday. This new part of the A section will also feature the cultural commentary and criticism written by the Editorial Page's team of critics that currently appears in PJ and Arena. The name Life & Arts not only better captures the range of this combined content but also aligns more closely with the relevant sections in our digital products.

— Greater New York coverage will be reduced in size and will also move into the main section of the paper in the New York region. GNY has added greatly to our appeal in the metropolitan region and our readers appreciate our distinctive coverage but the new approach in print will enable us to produce a more concise, focused daily report on life and business in the New York area.

We will continue to publish Journal Reports on Mondays and Mansion on Fridays as separate sections, so the paper will comprise three sections on those days and two - fatter - sections on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The Saturday paper will remain as it is, with the main news section, Business and Finance, Review and Off Duty, as well as WSJ magazine.

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. As I previously mentioned, there will unfortunately need to be an elimination of some positions as part of this process. But 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. We are uniquely fortunate to have the most ambitious, successful, financially and economically literate readership of any news business anywhere in the world. They are busy people, hungry for the kind of quality reporting and analysis only we can provide. We need to ensure that they get the news they want and need in as concise a daily print form as possible.

Over its 127 years, the format of the paper has changed many times in response to developments in the market for news, with new opportunities and new challenges. What has never changed - and is renewed vigorously in this latest iteration - is our commitment to producing the most distinguished news and enterprise journalism on all platforms.

Gerry"

Additional reporting by Joe Pompeo.

