WSJ mobile usage is up 59 percent from a year ago

Joe Pompeo of Capital New York writes about some details that emerged Monday from the News Corp. earnings conference call about The Wall Street Journal.

Pompeo writes, “At The Wall Street Journal, News Corp’s tony U.S. broadsheet, mobile usage was up 59 percent this September compared to the same month in 2012, Thomson said.

“Chief financial officer Bedi Singh added that News Corp., which also publishes the New York Post, The Times of London and many other papers in the U.K. and Australia, was ‘seeing traction’ across all of its digital efforts. Those also include things like paid online subscriptions for the British and Australian papers and e-books at HarperCollins, News Corp’s book-publishing arm.

“The executives declined to elaborate on digital revenues within the company’s news segment. But Singh cited ‘nice pickup in some of our digital statistics,’ while Thomson said: ‘What we are truly seeing is mass migration in mass media. It’s just a little early for us to quantify what that means in terms of long-term advertising trends.’

“The apparently sanguine digital outlook for the company’s news business comes amid declines in traditional advertising revenues, which were down 22 percent at the Australian papers during the first quarter, 7 percent at the U.K. papers and flat at The Wall Street Journal, said Singh. (The Post, which hemorrhages cash, was not mentioned beyond a quick plug for its recently relaunched website.)

“Advertising at Dow Jones, a financial news and information provider, was down in the ‘low single digits,’ said Singh.”

Read more here.