Tribune's 'Hoy' Ends Agreement with 'Wall Street Journal'

By: Laura Mart?nez and Nancy Ayala, Marketing y Medios New York's daily tabloid Hoy, owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co., ended its agreement with Dow Jones & Co. to publish the weekly Spanish-language edition of The Wall Street Journal. The last supplement ran on March 24 in Hoy. Tribune also will cease publishing the section in its other Hoy newspapers in Los Angeles and Chicago.

This month had marked the one-year launch of The Wall Street Journal insert in Hoy.

Digby Solomon D?ez, publisher of Hoy, confirms the dissolution of the deal, telling Marketing y Medios, "It's a very good section, but its look and feel did not match the rest of Hoy.

Solomon says the decision to stop publishing the section had "nothing to do with finances" but rather a way to focus Hoy's business coverage on in-house written, consumer-oriented stories. He adds that Hoy's editors already are at work on a new business section for the newspapers, which will focus more on community Latino leaders.

The decision to pull out "was not a lack of commitment [to business coverage] on our part," Solomon says.

Another newspaper partner with the Wall Street Journal also may re-evaluate its relationship with Dow Jones. Meximerica Media, publisher of Rumbo, the Spanish-language chain of tabloids in Texas, says it is "reviewing its relationship with some of its vendors." Rumbo publishes papers in Houston, San Antonio, the lower Rio Grande and Austin.

?The [Wall Street Journal] content is marvelous, but it is extremely expensive and unfortunately we haven't sold a single ad,? says Jonathan Friedland, editorial vice president of Meximerica Media.

Under an agreement with Dow Jones, the Journal provides all editorial content for the supplement, and advertising sales can be generated from either party.

Rumbo started up in the fall and began carrying the Journal in August 2004, while Hoy began publishing the eight-page weekly section in March 2004. But, as noted in Marketing y Medios, the section decreased to six pages in its Oct. 21 paper, though Hoy had the choice to return to its original printing at any time.

This leaves room for ImpreMedia LLC, which owns the three largest Spanish-language newspapers across the country and is rumored to pick up the Wall Street Journal supplement for El Diario-La Prensa in New York. ImpreMedia also owns La Opini?n in Los Angeles and La Raza in Chicago.

Calls to ImpreMedia were not returned.

The Wall Street Journal section also is published in Spanish-language newspapers Washington Hispanic in the District of Columbia and, since October 2004, the South Florida weekly paper El Sentinel.