Media Audit: WSJ Readership Climbs Under Murdoch Ownership

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Editor & Publisher reports that a recent study by Media Audit of  The Wall St. Journal, The New York Times and USA Today covering 2007 to 2009 shows a 20 percent jump in Journal readers since Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. acquired the business daily in 2007, while the Times readership remained flat and USA Today's plummeted.

Media Audit attributed the boost in readership to the Journal's increased coverage of politics and non-business news. According to the study, in 2009, more than 4.3 million adults read the WSJ in the more than 80 markets surveyed, or 3 percent of  adults in those markets, compared to 2.5 percent of adults who read the WSJ in those markets in 2007.

Meanwhile, Gannett Co.'s USA Today saw its readership decline over  the three-year period by 8.3 percent, while 4.4 percent of adults read the Times both in 2009 and 2007, according to Media Audit. Not surprisingly, the Media Audit study found that WSJ readers generally were more affluent than those of its counterparts.