The power of the Wall Street Journal behind you

Amanda Ernst of MediaBistro.com interviewed Deborah Needleman, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal‘s magazine, WSJ., and editor of The Journal’s “Off Duty,” a Saturday style section launched in September.

Here is an excerpt:

Do you think the fact that WSJ. is owned by The Wall Street Journal will help it to survive better than if it was a stand-alone luxury magazine?

It has the power of The Wall Street Journal behind it, but it’s its own separate business within the Journal. It’s not being bankrolled by the Journal, but there is the support of the greater paper. The editorial support and the resources I can pull are incredibly helpful, and the sales team is selling not just the magazine but the entire Journal franchise. So, it’s a much stronger sell than just going out and selling the magazine individually.

The Wall Street Journal typically has a mostly male audience, but the audience of luxury magazines is usually female. How are you trying to bridge the gap between those two audiences?

Part of what I’m trying to do is broaden the reach of the newspaper’s readership. It used to be much more male dominated and now I think it’s 60-40. And so the gap is being bridged. A lot of what I hear about people reading “Off Duty” and the magazine is, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know The Journal did this. I got it from my boyfriend or my husband.’ So I think it’s a shift that’s still happening. But the idea is that the kind of news and information that the newspaper and these lifestyle sections offers is not like a boy’s playground –- it’s for everyone.

Read more here.