AgencySpy has confirmed that the Wall Street Journal’s advertising section has been cut from 5 times per week to just 2, marking a subtle change in how the publication covers your industry.
A WSJ representative said in a statement, “[t]he Journal regularly assesses its resources and priorities to meet the needs and interests of our readers. Our hope is that by running the column less often, we can better single out the key trends and issues in the industry while increasing our ability to leap opportunistically on the news. We remain fully committed to in-depth reporting about the advertising industry.”
Two of the Journal’s writers have been covering the beat, including columnist Suzanne Vranica (she covers marketing as well), and Emily Steel, who reports. Other staffers contribute as well.
Breaking news will be the exception.
Ken Roman, former CEO of Ogilvy, once mentioned to me how interesting he thought it was that advertising has its own column in many newspapers. In the end, it’s all about business wins and losses — you don’t see many stories about law firms winning clients, etc. Well, maybe that’s different now. Maybe you’re visiting sites like AgencySpy, Adweek etc more? Maybe you don’t want to pay for WSJ’s content. Either way, the section has been around for decades, and after you cut it to twice a week, there’s not much left to cut.
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