Dow Jones To Close Asia Weekly

By: (AP) Dow Jones & Co. is halting publication of The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, which has provided North America with business news from the Asian-Pacific region for 23 years.

In a letter to employees dated June 5, Karen House, president of Dow Jones International, said the last issue will be July 1. "We have reluctantly concluded that the Weekly is no longer a publication that makes business sense for Dow Jones," she wrote.

The Asian Journal Weekly was "a very small weekly publication that was printed in America to people who had an interest in Asian issues," said Wall Street Journal spokesman Steve Goldstein. "It's no longer productive to put out that publication."

The Asian Journal Weekly's circulation had grown 63%, from 8,526 in 1996 to 13,900 in 2001, and a one-year subscription sold for $270, according to the paper's Web site.

But Goldstein said the growth of Dow Jones' global operations and the Online Journal made continuing with the small weekly impractical.

The paper is published each Monday with news of the previous business week in Asia.

Dow Jones will assign two of the paper's six staffers to other positions in the company and let the others go, Goldstein said.

Asian Journal Weekly customers will be offered subscriptions to Dow Jones' Far East Economic Review.

On the Net: http://www.dowjones.com/awsjweekly