The Wall Street Journal announced Thursday it will close its Boston bureau due to financial difficulties, leaving a small reporting team of nine that includes a Boston University journalism professor potentially jobless.
The Boston bureau will be the only one to close, WSJ Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson wrote in an email to staff, effective Dec. 31.
The decision, he said, did not come easily.
‘The economic background to the closure is painfully obvious to us all,’ he said. ‘An investigative function will remain in Boston, but the core reporting team will be disbanded.’
The cut does not reflect on the quality of the bureau’s reporting, which Thomson described as ‘truly great.’
WSJ spokeswoman Ashley Huston said in an email that though the economic difficulties are unfortunate, Boston was the most logical choice for a cutback.
‘While we continue to invest, we face the same cost-constraints as many others in the industry,’ she said. ‘Many Boston-based companies covered by the Journal have relocated over the years, and most beats that are currently covered in Boston can be absorbed by other bureaus.’
The Boston markets will be covered by new offices in New York and by the WSJ affiliates MarketWatch and Dow Jones Newswires remaining in Boston, she said.
BU journalism professor David Armstrong, a WSJ reporter for nine years who will lose his job there as a result of the cut, said the decision came as a surprise.
‘[Thursday’s announcement] was the first inkling anybody up here had that they were going to close the bureau,’ he said. ‘Even rumors.’
Armstrong said the employees were told they could apply for other positions with the WSJ.
‘Most of us haven’t had a chance to think about it, whether we’d like to stay and try to do something at the paper,’ he said.
The closure, he said, underscores the current state of the journalism business.
‘Newspaper’s not a terribly vibrant industry right now,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been in newspapers, it’s what I love to do, but I think at this point in time I might consider doing something different in journalism.’
Cutting Boston shows the financial pressure the WSJ is under, he said.
‘This bureau has done great work including a couple of recent Pulitzers that came directly from this bureau,’ he said. ‘The fact that they cut us speaks volumes about the current economic state of the industry.’
College of Communication Dean Tom Fiedler said the WSJ will lose some of its New England edge with the cut because local bureaus allow for close observation of trends and facilitate relationships ‘far more valuable’ than those possible at a distance.
‘It just will not be able to maintain the quality of the coverage that it had before,’ he said. ‘You’re going to lose some of that sensitivity of being in the place and soaking up some of the feeling by osmosis.’
He said he was surprised Boston was chosen above all other bureaus, but this may provide an opportunity for local papers to fill the WSJ’s reporting gap.
‘It could stimulate more interest in the local newspapers, particularly in The Boston Globe and the newspapers here in Boston that focus on the business and financial industry,’ he said.
But he agreed with Armstrong that the cut was indicative of the loss of advertising revenue for newspapers, as online media become increasingly popular.
‘Unfortunately this isn’t something that will bounce back when the recession relaxes its grip,’ he said. ‘Once advertising migrates away from the printed newspaper, it almost never comes back.’