The Wall Street Journal will stop publishing its Asian and European editions, the paper has said, amid a wider editorial restructuring and falling revenue.
In an end to a 40-year history, the company will stop publishing its separate edition for Europe on Friday while its Asian edition will cease publication on 7 October. The decision comes after the paper’s parent company, News Corp, reported a loss of $643m (£479m) for the most recent fiscal year, which ended on 30 June. That compares to a $235m profit during the previous year.
The paper began publishing a separate Asian edition in 1976 and its European edition followed in 1983. The US edition of the WSJ will be available in some cities at a later unspecified date, the paper said.
Despite recent losses, digital subscriptions are on the rise and the WSJ plans to focus on encouraging customers in Asia and Europe to read the paper online. Those gains in online-only subscriptions made “continuing the foreign editions no longer cost-effective”, the newspaper said.
The newsstand price for the paper in Hong Kong, the company’s Asian headquarters, is about £2.20, while a six-month digital subscription costs £82. The paper added 322,000 digital subscriptions in the most recent financial quarter for a total of 1.27m.
Reports emerged in June 2017 that the WSJ would be ending its publishing operations outside the US, and a spokeswoman at the time said the paper was “constantly examining the balance between print and digital at a time when we’re seeing sharp growth in customer demand for digital”.
The end of publishing separate editions also comes as the paper undergoes a wider restructuring. At the end of 2016, all WSJ employees were eligible for buyouts and layoffs followed shortly after.
The WSJ has seen a host of reporters and editors leave in the past year as some staff grow frustrated with the paper’s coverage of US president Donald Trump. Employees have described being “directly stymied” by editor Gerry Baker, who is said to have a congenial relationship with Trump.
