The Wall Street Journal is trimming its page size and closing its Canadian bureaus as part of a major cost-cutting drive.

The financial newspaper announced Monday it would shave about a column width from its broadsheet pages — moving from six columns to five. It will also contain more colour, more graphics, and shorter stories. Fewer front page stories will be allowed to continue inside the paper. The news hole, or amount of space dedicated to news stories as opposed to advertising, will also shrink by about five per cent.

The new look makes its debut Jan. 2. 

The shrinkage is expected to save $18 million a year as a smaller page size will allow the paper to be printed in more locations. The paper has faced declining revenues from advertising.

Last week, the Journal closed its bureaus in Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary and laid off four full-time reporters and two part-timers.

Union unhappy

"This is a tough one to get your mind around," said Steve Yount, an organizer with the International Association of Publishers' Employees, the largest union at Dow Jones & Co., the company that owns the Wall Street Journal.

"The Journal has 'walked away' from coverage of the largest trading partner of the United States, leaving Canada as the only G7 nation where the Journal doesn't have a presence," he said on the IAPE website.

Dow Jones & Co. will still have Canadian employees working at Dow Jones Newswires. They, along with U.S.-based Journal reporters, will provide Canadian coverage for the WSJ as of the new year.

Editor & Publisher says the Wall Street Journal has a paid circulation of about 11,000 in Canada — less than one per cent of its total. 

With files from the Associated Press