All newspapers reach points in their history when an old conservative style is sloughed off and a new version is presented to the public in the interests of "modernisation", that is increased sales and advertising revenue. Conor O'Clery reports from Wall Street.
The Irish Times did it on April 21st, 1941, when it began printing stories on the front page, displacing columns of small ads. No doubt many readers were upset. On Monday next, the staid Wall Street Journal takes a momentuous step when it introduces a redesigned front page.
Founded in 1882 by three young reporters - Mr Charles Dow, Mr Edward Jones and Mr Charles Bergstresser - in a basement office near the New York Stock Exchange, it was initially produced as handwritten newsletters called "flimsies" that were delivered by messenger to subscribers in the Wall Street area.
The leading US newspaper of business has clung for a century to a conservative format long abandoned by other daily newspapers. It does not splash the news of the day. That goes inside.
The Journal front page has only single-column articles and no photographs, just black and white drawings of people in the news or simple graphs.
The story in the far left and far right columns is often a devastating in-depth investigation crammed with detail and quotes - like its exposés of Enron and Elan's accounting methods in recent months - that can take weeks to reseach and often run to 3,000 words inside. They have accounted for many of the Journal's 25 Pulitzer prizes.
A central column usually has an equally well-researched but off-beat story on obscure but never dull subjects, like the struggle to stop illegal harvesting of hearts of palm in Brazil or how Muslim women cope with swimsuit displays in beauty contests to cite two recent examples. Yesterday, it investigated frog poachers in France. Other page-one columns simply list news headlines from business and worldwide.
Now the paper is keeping up with the changing times by introducing colour and splash headlines over three columns. It will also combine investigative with breaking news, according to leaked reports.
The new format is still a closely guarded secret at the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones, which will mark the relaunch next week with a $21 million (€23.8 million) advertising campaign, parties and special events, including the ringing of the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange on April 9th by the chief executive of Dow Jones, Mr Peter Kahn.
Many loyal readers will not be pleased and will question the necessity of the move. Circulation has increased for the past three years and the Journal is secure in its place as the second-largest US newspaper, with a total circulation of 1.85 million, a figure exceeded only by the hotel room give-away in USA Today, and far ahead of the New York Times.
But the graph of advertising revenue for Dow Jones print publications - mainly the Wall Street Journal - has been going the other way, dropping from $1.07 billion in 2000 to $706 million in 2001, and apparently still slipping. Circulation revenues have also fallen due to a rise in the number of subscription copies sold at a discount.
The aim of the makeover apparently is to make the Journal more appealing to the general reader and to women and younger readers, and to attract advertising from busineses seeking to target these groups. The current profile of the typical Wall Street Journal reader is male, late middle-aged and conservative.
Already the newspaper has added a successful weekend leisure and arts section on Friday (it does not publish on Saturday or Sunday), and the redesign will include a new daily section called "Personal Journal".
The Wall Street Journal has also led the way in electronic publishing, charging subscribers for access to its website, something which other newspapers, including The Irish Times, are now being forced to do, to cope with the expense of maintaining and updating the site every day.
Other city-based newspapers in the US see the redesigned Wall Street Journal, the only real nation-wide newspaper in the United States apart from USA Today, as a threat to their own circulation figures. It is hardly a coincidence that the New York Times, which has been trying to make itself national - since last year it has been supplying copies to every Starbucks coffee shop throughout the country - is announcing its own "dramatic changes", with arts, dining and house and home sections added to the national and not just the north-east editions.
For its part, the management of the Wall Street Journal has sought to reassure readers who might be upset about the disappearance of the old-style Wall Street Journal that all is still well with the world. The result, said Mr Steven Goldstein, a spokesman for Dow Jones, will be "Classic Coke", not "Coke Light".
