“I won’t deny it,” said Pensiero about the possibility of advertising on the front page. “We’ve mocked them up. It’s not a given we put them into production.”

The team will be lead by Jim Penisero and designer Mario Garcia, who oversaw the paper’s 2002 redesign, and the final product will be unveiled in January 2007.
 
Not only is the paper considering advertising on the front page, but the Journal is planning on reducing the number of page jumps and shrinking the trim size (making it more like the proportions of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times). The trim size reductions are expected to save the paper $18 million per year.

The advertising on page one would replace one of the features from Garcia’s 2002 redesign, the “Extra” slot, where the paper currently runs breaking news. This slot currently allows top priority news to make the front page without going through the difficult top-down assignment-and-approval process.

Some staffers aren’t thrilled about the prospect of advertising on the front page.

“We understand this is a for-profit business,” one newsroom staffer said. “But an ad on the front page? That would really piss people off.”

As advertising is increasingly moving to the Internet, giving them a spot on the front-page of newspapers may breath some life into newspaper advertising.

Source: New York Observer