There’s General Praise For the New Guardian Berliner Size, the Wall Street Journal Publishes On Saturday, and the New York Times Starts Charging for Its Prime Columnists on the Web

In the UK, the Guardian newspaper, with circulation at a 27-year low, launched its new Berliner (hybrid between broadsheet and compact) all color newspaper and enjoyed circulation gains of 40% on the first couple of days and by the end of the first week was still holding onto 20% -30% increases. It needs those additional readers to help pay the $145 million investment for the new London and Manchester presses.

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In the US, The Wall Street Journal, which has seen a 6% drop in advertisement lineage this year with B2B advertising still on the decline, has relaunched after 50 years a Saturday edition to entice new consumer advertisers – particularly luxury brands wanting access to the Journal’s rich readership demographics. Adding 150 new staffers and getting the Saturday newspaper to home addresses rather than to offices means the project will lose, according to one estimate, some $12 million this year alone.

And the New York Times, trying to regain lost print subscribers, or at the very least get some web money to make up for that declining print circulation, tries a new Internet policy that puts some of its most popular print columnists behind a pay wall on the web requiring a $49.95 annual payment. Will that boost print circulation, decrease web usage, or be a big web moneymaker?

Taking the Guardian first, it was going through a particularly rough time. Like all UK quality newspapers it has seen large circulation losses over the past few years with circulation in July of 358,345 marking a 27-year low. And yet its web site is one of the most popular news sites in the world with more than 11 million unique visitors monthly.

As the newspaper world (outside the US) took to size reduction, two of the Guardian’s prime competitors -- The Times and The Independent -- switched to compact size and those moves gave the Times a 4% circulation increase and the Independent a 20% gain in what was still a very difficult market. But the Guardian just did not believe that compact was right for it.

So it took the bold move to buy all new color presses from Germany and switch to a hybrid size – Berliner, first made popular in Berlin and used by several European newspapers including Le Monde -- that is in between compact and broadsheet.

Word on the street during its first week was very positive. Even competitive newspapers gave it a thumbs-up and carried interviews with many personalities who mostly said they liked the new format.

The Guardian took the opportunity to rejig its editorial format, too, shifting more emphasis to covering events of interest to women (very positive response) to deciding to drop the Doonesbury comic strip (big mistake – so many complaints it has been reinstated!).

On a circulation basis, analysts said if the new Guardian could hold onto 400,000 circulation from the new format then it will have done very well. If it holds on to the increases after the first week it achieves that goal.

The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times are now the only two UK national quality daily newspapers that have remained broadsheet. The FT has hinted that it might reduce down to Berliner and the Telegraph, which in the past had been adamant it would remain as it is and has spent money recently promoting its broadsheet size, now says it will look at how the Guardian does in deciding if it, too, might shrink.

On the other side of the Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal is now a six-day-a-week newspaper, having launched its Saturday edition that it had dropped in 1953, a year after the New York Stock Exchange stopped Saturday trading.

The Journal has been very hard hit by the decline in B2B business – financial and technology ads are down some 20% in the past year. To boost its Friday newspaper into more of a weekend newspaper, it started a Weekend Journal section in 1998 followed by a “Personal Journal” in 2002 on Tuesday and Thursday focusing on consumer news and attracting more consumer advertising that has increased some 26% since 2001. But it became evident if it really wanted to attract the Saturday advertiser then it really needed to have a Saturday newspaper.

Mind your p's and q's

The Journal is taking a leaf from its competitor, The Financial Times, that some 10 years ago launched its How To Spend It magazine with its Saturday edition. The magazine is full of luxury consumer advertising aimed at the most desired FT demographics -- boardroom and senior executives who have money to spend on luxury.

The Saturday Journal carries three sections: one for the hard news of the day (at least readers don’t have to wait until Monday for that now) another section covering personal finance/market news, and then the jewel in the crown – a third section called “Pursuits” that features articles on the personal health, cars, travel, fashion, food, gadgets, education, entertainment and shopping. The target advertisers for “Pursuits” are luxury brands, automobile companies and the like.

Saturday is the biggest shopping day in the US (which then begs the question of why so many US newspapers are full of consumer advertising on Sundays with less on Saturdays?), but the Journal is going to have to fight that local paper at home for its readers’ time. It also hopes that by having the Saturday edition delivered at home it will attract female readership to the new section.

The Journal includes the Saturday edition within its current subscription price so it doesn’t have to fight the battle of building a subscriber base. But it is going to have to fight the competition for “time” -- do people have enough time on Saturday to read two big newspapers?

Competitors such as the New York Times are not just lying down waiting for the Journal to take its Saturday readership away. The Times, for instance, probably has many Wall Street executives already reading its Saturday edition at home, and it has heavily invested in improving its Saturday financial section to retain that readership.

And will the Saturday edition attract the advertisers the Journal is after? The initial spin from the WSJ is positive. It says 120 advertisers have signed up for the Weekend Edition including quality brands such as BMW and Harry Winston jewelry, but it doesn’t say how much new money is involved compared to advertisers just spreading their spend at the newspaper from five to six days.

And lastly, The New York Times, besides fighting a Saturday WSJ, is also implementing a very controversial new Internet policy – 22 of its most prized columnists will from today no longer be available for free on the Times’ web site unless the user is a Times print subscriber. If the user does not subscribe it will cost $49.95 a year for access. (Outside the US, an International Herald Tribune subscriber who gets the newspaper delivered at least three times a week can continue to have free nytimes web access).

While those columns represent just 3% of the web site, they are among the most actively accessed and e-mailed items. Bloggers who frequently link to the columnists are none to happy. And the Times estimates that the loss of those links, plus the loss of some of that email activity will decrease site traffic for a few months.

The Times’ print circulation stands at some 1.1 million copies for the daily paper, down approximately 60,000 copies from three years ago. How many of those 60,000 left the print edition for the free Internet site? How many will either come back to the print edition for those columnists or pay the $49.95 annual web fee? And will the general public be willing to pay for columnists?

WSJ Saturday Edition Gets Initial Poor Reviews - September 26, 2005

Many reviews for the first Saturday’s Wall Street Journal were devastating. William Powers, writing for the National Journal said, “In one of the more spectacular belly flops of modern media’s history, the Wall Street Journal published a newspaper without a single inspired or memorable moment.”

Another headline went, "Weekend (Yawwwn) Journal (Yawwwn) Debuts, Disappoints”.

A Reuters story said the edition featured “a familiar mix of well-written stories and lifestyle articles” but also quoted a consultant who said the paper resembled too much the Monday-Friday editions. Also, based on the first edition there did not seem to be a new group of luxury advertisers whom the Journal wanted to attract.

But perhaps the most accurate review of all stated, “The true test will be 12 weeks from now.”