WSJ has boosted its female subscribers with students

A media battle is being fought over the next generation of business-minded women and The Wall Street Journal has achieved early success by recruiting nearly 200,000 female students as subscribers.

Ian Burrell of The Drum writes, “For The Wall Street Journal there is the added incentive that a rush of young female devotees can help it to achieve its target of 3 million subscribers (across the portfolio of its publisher Dow Jones), a challenge set by Will Lewis, Dow Jones chief executive and publisher of the Journal.

“Dow Jones will imminently hit that 3 million figure (it passed 2.8 million in February, with 2.3 million of those being Journal subscriptions), although not within the three-year target which Lewis laid down when he took up his post in 2014.

“The publisher is being helped across the line by a drive on US school and university campuses that, The Drum understands, has resulted in more than 350,000 student sign-ups. Some of these are $49-a-year individual student subs (the Journal is currently offering a ‘flash sale’ sample of 15 weeks access for $1), and others are individual activations of campus-wide Journal sponsorships paid for by their university.

“What is remarkable about this campus push is that 53% of sign-ups are by female students.”

Read more here.