The Wall Street Journal will fold up its Asia and Europe editions that are bleeding money.
The Guardian reported the news, attributing the move to falling revenues and a ‘wider editorial restructuring’ initiative by the newspaper.
The Asian edition of the newspaper will reportedly cease to exist from October 7 while the European edition will stop publication from today. The first edition from Asia had come out in 1976 while Europe had its first copy of the WSJ from 1983. The paper has said though that some cities will still get the US edition.
The move reportedly comes after parent company News Corp had posted a revenue loss of $649 million on June 30 this year for the previous fiscal.
The paper though reportedly says that the rise in online subscriptions will also help them reach out to the Asian and European audience by asking them to subscribe digitally as “continuing the foreign editions (is) no longer cost-effective”. The Journal had about 1.3 million digital-only subscribers at the end of the quarter. The paper has also been raising the price of subscriptions.
The move also comes at a time when the WSJ has come under fire for going soft on US President Donald Trump. It comes during a period when all of the newspaper’s employees were eligible to be bought out, with layoffs coming soon after, at the end of 2016.
