By: E&P Staff The Wall Street Journal took issue late Monday with a New York Times article that it said "wrongly reported" its circulation growth increasingly has depended on heavy discounting since Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought Dow Jones & Co. a year ago.
In fact, the Journal said, while it does some discounting, it "moved away" from deep discounting in 2008, raising its introductory price and increasing the single-copy price by nearly 40%.
Despite those increases, the newspaper said, the Individually Paid
Circulation category "continues to grow in an industry that is largely shrinking." Print circulation revenue in the most recent quarter was up 9% from the year-ago period, it added.
"The New York Times may choose to speculate and offer its opinions in
its business coverage, and there were many erroneous assumptions and
speculations made in the story. However, regarding our circulation
strategy and recent strong success, the Times simply got it wrong
today," Paul Bascobert, chief marketing officer for Dow Jones and the Journal, said in a statement.
The Times article, headlined, "The Media Baron and His Soft Spot," mostly concerned what it said was the financial drag of News Corp.'s newspaper properties. It asserted investors may be growing impatient with Murdoch's "attachment to newspapers," which was tolerated in better economic times.
A Times Co. spokesperson was not immediately available to comment, her office said late Monday.
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