Categories: OLD Media Moves

Wall Street Journal returns to six-column front page

The Wall Street Journal, which has had a five-column front since a redesign that was unveiled at the beginning of 2007, has returned to a six-column front page.

The change took effect on Monday.

Here is a statement from the paper:

“The Journal decided to add a sixth column to the front page to provide editors design flexibility and slightly increase the amount of real estate dedicated to the major stories of the day. The previous five-column paper wasn’t as flexible and tended to limit the layout options available to editors.

“The decision to move to a six-column format is a change that has been given considerable thought since Marcus Brauchli took over as managing editor in April 2007.

“The ‘What’s News’ feature will continue to be two columns in the new format–Business and Finance, and World-Wide. The Journal will continue to provide its readers with art, graphs and charts as well as hedcuts in the new redesign. The front page ad unit will also remain intact.”

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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View Comments

Editrrr says:
February 6, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Saw this Monday ... not a bad move; more in line with how NYT's 48-inch Web 1A debuted. You really do need that fourth news column to play a pair of big stories up high.
Dawn Bridges says:
February 6, 2008 at 4:33 pm
i'm a dumb blonde airhead
WTF says:
February 11, 2008 at 9:56 am
The real news here is the stories the paper is putting in those columns. They are the same stories appearing on the front of the Times and the Post. That's a bad move for the Journal, which used to have strictly original content on the front. The long-form enterprise stories that used to have that "prime real estate" were the paper's signature and what made it a worth while read. The new management is taking things in a bad direction.
agdesilva says:
February 28, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Echoing the point made by WTF, the WSJ website once had a primer on how to read the paper. They proudly discussed the breaking news in Column Six (or was it One its been so long I now forget). I recently wrote to the WSJ and the reply is below. They did not comment on the loss of their promise for new original stories on page one.
question:
Subject of Message: Article/Content Question
Message Text: when did you go to six columns on page one? what was the motivation? was there a print article about this? Column six used to be reserved for breaking news articles; material I would find no where else but first on the WSJ. Will this come back?
answer:
Thank you for the email regarding The Wall Street Journal.
The last format change was Tuesday, January 2, 2008. Upper management thought it would be a
improvement to the paper. There was a notice to readers letting them know of the change. There are no plans to do
another format change at this time.
If you have any questions please email us at services.wsj.com or call
1-800-568-7625.
Thank you for the email and have a great day.
Cordially,
Customer Relations
DOW JONES L.P.
wsj.service@dowjones.com
1-800-JOURNAL (568-7625)