Wall Street Journal to Hire About a Dozen Reporters to Cover Local News in New York

The Wall Street Journal plans to hire a small local news staff in New York, covering traditional city desk beats like courthouses, City Hall and the state capital, according to people briefed on the plans.

The push into metropolitan news, which would involve about a dozen new positions, is part of The Journal’s effort to create a New York edition, first reported last summer as a project that was focused mostly on increased arts coverage. The edition could begin early next year.

It also reflects Rupert Murdoch’s mandate to make The Journal more of a general-interest newspaper, and a more direct competitor to The New York Times. Since Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation bought The Journal almost two years ago, it has pushed business news, its traditional staple, farther back into the paper, while adding new features like sports coverage.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Because the WSJ is more or less a rounding error in the News Corp. empire, they have a lot more flexibility in what they do than the NYT. That said, if the journal wants to compete for the NYT readers, they need a puzzle every day…

They can’t really compete with the NY Times with a staff of 12…What they can do is inform their worldwide readership about news of interest that’s occuring in New York City, one of the world’s capitals, and give their domestic readers the basic lowdown on what’s going on in NYC, which receives about 50 million out-of-town visitors a year. It also positions them to be ready, and not overwhelmed, if New York is the site of a breaking news event of international significance.

Then again, with all the layoffs past and future at the NYT, and the tendency of a lot of metro reporters at the NYT and elsewhere using [some with attribution, some not] local blogs and weeklies as source material for stories, the mighty WSJ metro staff [augmented by the NY Post, probably] could be very interesting. Watch your back, A.O. Rupe’s gunning for ya …

Would be great to see some local competition — the NYT city desk can always use a legit competitot.

Here’s betting that those dreary beat descriptions are really just a sly News Corp. joke at the expense of the over-earnest “civic duty” crowd.

Much more likely: Four reporters will be assigned to write about Rupert Murdoch’s friends. Eight will be assigned to write about his enemies.

If they do that, it could be quite exciting.

What’s next, horoscopes and supermarket flyers?

and put a conservative spin on those stories as well, I suppose.