The Latest: WSJ’s new initiative to reach audiences under 35

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THE NEWS
The Wall Street Journal launched a monthly digital magazine last week aimed at readers 35 and under. The magazine, called WSJ Noted, contains original content by a dedicated team as well as other Journal reporters and highlights relevant work published in other sections.

SO WHAT
WSJ now has more than 3 million total subscribers after digital-only subscriptions grew 20% year-over-year to 2.2 million as of May. WSJ also already has a “very large audience of people in universities” coming to its platforms, as Louise Story, WSJ’s chief news strategist and chief technology officer, told us last month. The company hopes Noted will continue these successes by helping it better connect with and monetize the younger audiences it already has on its platforms.

Noted is intentionally experimental — according to Story, it is primarily a way to “see what really resonates with younger audiences.” This is evident in its tagline, which is telling stories “for, with, and by” young audiences. For example, WSJ has recruited a group of 200 young people to be “Noted Advisers” who will provide feedback and story ideas and collaborate with the Noted team (and likely serve as an organic network of brand ambassadors). This builds on WSJ’s existing emphasis on audience engagement, for example, through callouts which “solicit feedback from the audience [who] come in with many different anecdotes and tips and pointers that would become great stories,” by involving the target readership throughout the reporting process.

This increased engagement may convert students to subscribers once they no longer receive access through universities, or more generally more relevant content may lead younger readers to hit up against the paywall more frequently. WSJ already has partnerships with 200 academic institutions, which provide access to their students; Noted could be key to keeping those young people reading — and subscribing — once they graduate. While Noted will have a heavy presence on Instagram and other platforms, its web presence will be behind WSJ’s dynamic paywall. Its monthly cover story, however, will live outside the paywall, and WSJ stories linked or excerpted in Noted stories will be free to read.

As Laura Hazard Owen notes in Nieman Lab, this strategy is distinct from other initiatives that aim to create a separate subscription product for younger audiences, like NYT Now — which was an app discontinued in 2016. By keeping Noted behind the paywall, is also distinct from the complimentary access that publishers like The New York Times and Bloomberg have been offering young audiences or new verticals like The Washington Post’s The Lily, which is, as of yet, not walled.

LOOK FOR
How this resonates with audiences — 18–35 is a large age range, and it’s not clear how much their needs overlap. Noted might end up skewing mostly towards the younger side of this spectrum — 10 of the 14 of the initial advisers spotlighted are currently undergraduate students.

Also, how well its off-platform-heavy strategy succeeds, and whether it leads to engagement on-site and readers hitting the paywall.