More on WSJ vs. NYT

Nat Ives of Advertising Age writes Monday about the pending launch of the New York section of The Wall Street Journal, and he has some interesting statistics about the paper’s readers.

Ives writes, “The Journal’s daily readership, however, was 62.3% men and 37.7% women in the most recent audience estimates from Mediamark Research & Intelligence, compared with a Times readership that was 51.1% men and 48.9% women. And the Journal may be a bigger paper nationally, but so far it lags behind the Times in New York. The Journal had 284,224 paying readers in the New York market area over the 12 months ending last September, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, compared with 495,048 for the Times.

“Because of those reasons, ‘It’s going to be hard for them to all of a sudden shift dollars to the Journal,’ said George Janson, managing partner and director of print at Group M, a media-buying agency. ‘If it’s a time-sensitive message where they really want to heavy up in the New York market, it may have some relevance, but other than that there’s not a line of people outside of my door saying we’ve got to get into The Wall Street Journal New York edition.’

“The Journal counters that its female audience has been increasing over the past few years — and that its female readers are more affluent and more likely to be employed than their Times counterparts. Its whole audience, for that matter, has a higher median income than Times readers, according to Mediamark. And many advertisers with New York interests have used The Journal for years.”

Read more here.