According to the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal will begin to place advertising on its front page this September. The move could generate tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue.
The move is one more sign of the relentless financial pressures that have forced newspapers to consider new ways of raising money — like giving prominence to advertisers in areas of the paper once considered sacred.
While journalists may grumble about ad creep, L. Gordon Crovitz, publisher of The Journal and executive vice president of The Journal’s owner, Dow Jones & Company, said that readers, at least those in Journal focus groups, did not care. “We had a question about how readers would react to the front-page ad, and we were struck by how insignificant an issue it was,’’ he said.
The Journal, with a print circulation of about 1.7 million, has the second-highest weekday circulation in the country, after USA Today.
