News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is in Australia, and he’s talking about the huge effort the company is putting behind The Wall Street Journal.
Terry McCrann of the Melbourne Herald-Sun writes, “We want to build the Saturday Journal into a really big weekend read, he goes on. That might cost another $US4-5 million a year. Which is not a lot in the context on our $US5 billion EBIT profit.
“The WSJ is the only newspaper in the world successfully operating a subscriber website, he claims, with a large number of subscribers paying considerable sums.
“It’s averaging $100 per subscriber — around $US120 million a year. We are putting up rates and the numbers are increasing, he adds.
“On the print side, he says that last month the WSJ was probably the only newspaper in America that managed to increase print advertising revenue. Then he adds ruefully ‘it was just an increase and I do not expect it to be maintained.'”
Read more here.
