DailyMediaNews
WSJ.com Winning Formula: Target Female Readers
by Erik Sass, Monday, March 21, 2011
...Anyone who has read The Wall Street Journal regularly over the years can't help but notice a decided shift in the tone and content of the print newspaper and the Web site, which has grown to include more non-business content: culture, lifestyles, leisure activities, and the like.
It's all part of a strategy to make the paper more accessible, increase the audience, and attract new advertisers. One of the biggest changes is more content targeting female readers, although a new online section entitled "Journal Women" has since been quietly scrapped.
...Then February brought another opinion piece guaranteed to stir watercooler banter and online debate: in "Where Have All the Good Men Gone?" in which author Kay S. Hymowitz argued that men are increasingly enjoying an extended adolescence through their 20s, putting off their adult responsibilities and leaving potential female partners in the lurch.
...Still, it remains to be seen whether this new focus on issues of interest to women will translate into a long-term increase in the number of female readers.
According to the WSJ.com's own stats from May 2010, digital readership is still stuck at a 75%-25% male-female ratio; more recently, Quantcast has it at 69%-31%, suggesting that a shift may indeed be underway. The newspaper's print readership was 62.3% male and 37.7% female in fall 2009, according to MRI.
MH
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