WSJ Sunday publishes early to help papers bracing for hurricane

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

The Wall Street Journal Sunday, which runs in business sections across the country, changed its schedule this week to help papers along the Atlantic Coast who are adjusting their printing schedules because of Hurricane Irene’s impending landfall.

A request from the Charleston paper spurred the action.

“We got a note from the Post and Courier Tuesday asking if we could ship the pages Thursday,” said Cristina Lourosa-Ricardo, the news editor of the WSJ Sunday. “We then called the other partners papers in South Carolina and Florida asking if they needed pages early as well. The early pages will be going to the Post and Courier in Charleston, the Beaufort Gazette and the Hilton Head Island Packet.”

It’s only the second time in the WSJ Sunday history that it has sent pages in advance. The other time was in 2004 when a hurricane forced The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale to adjust its schedule.

“It has required some rallying on our end, getting copy in and edited and charts and illustrations completed earlier than normal,” said Lourosa-Ricardo. “It’s been a group effort by the editors, reporters, graphics and production. We normally send out the pages on Friday afternoons so we had to get everything done a day earlier. And it was a bit more challenging, for me at least, since we are down one person this week.”