Internal WSJ audit: Paper need to rethink how it covers news and its audience

The Wall Street Journal needs to rethink how it gathers news, what kinds of topics it covers and who its audience is, according to an internal audit, writes Edmund Lee of The New York Times.

Lee reports, “But reaching those people will be tough given ‘the lack of focus on diversity within our coverage,’ according to the study.

“The report found that over a three-month period, of the 108 lead stories it published ‘only one had race as the main topic.’ It added: ‘None had gender as the main topic, and none had L.G.B.T.Q.-specific issues as the main topic of the story. As far as the protagonist of a story — many of our stories do not have human protagonists. But when they did, we found that 13 percent were people of color.’

“A lack of digital expertise is an underlying problem, the report said. ‘We need editors to more actively take into account Google Trends and Google Suggestions in story assigning and encourage people to do so within their beats and columns,’ it offered as an example.

“The bulk of this section also outlined specific recommendations, such as improving ‘wellness coverage,’ while discouraging ‘earnings’ stories, a category that often ‘underperforms on page views.'”

Read more here.