Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- WSJ., the Wall Street Journal's new luxury lifestyle magazine, has attracted 51 advertisers and will be profitable immediately, the newspaper's Chief Revenue Officer Michael Rooney said.

The magazine, with a global circulation of 960,000, will be distributed to the Journal's wealthiest readers in the U.S. on Saturdays starting Sept. 6, and a day earlier to Asian and European customers, the News Corp.-owned newspaper said today at a breakfast event in New York.

``We have the audience already,'' Rooney said. ``We thought, let's do what's good for our customers. Let's cut back on the circulation because it's going to make our demographics rise so it'll be an even more affluent audience than we currently have.''

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch took over the Journal with the $5.2 billion acquisition of Dow Jones & Co. in December. The magazine, whose debut issue features the exercise habits of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and the demand for American folk art, is the latest in a series of changes at the Journal.

WSJ., which has 104 pages in the U.S. edition and 80 pages in the international version, attracted 19 advertisers that were new to the Journal, Rooney said. Luxury advertisers include Hermes International SCA, maker of ties and Birkin handbags, and Swiss watch-maker Audemars Piguet.

`7-Series'

Asked at today's event how WSJ. compares with the Financial Times' magazine, Journal managing editor Robert Thomson said: ```How to spend it' is like the BMW 3-series. This is like the 7-series.''

The magazine will start off as a quarterly, moving to monthly circulation sometime next year, Thomson said. WSJ.'s publisher is Ellen Asmodeo-Giglio. Its editor is Tina Gaudoin, the former editor of the Times of London's quarterly magazine, Luxx.

WSJ. has attracted advertisers in ``challenging'' times because marketers are interested in its base of wealthy readers, Asmodeo-Giglio said today. Ad sales won't diminish, she said.

``I don't know if anyone can predict it will be very successful or something they'll withdraw in a year or two,'' said Hal Vogel, a New York-based media analyst. ``It's normal for this kind of organization to expand into an upper-class market and attract advertisers to a relatively high-powered crowd.''

WSJ.com

Thomson, previously the editor of Murdoch's London-based Times, was appointed the Journal's publisher after the Dow Jones takeover. The 47-year-old was named managing editor in May, succeeding Marcus Brauchli, who quit the previous month. The Wall Street Journal's publisher is now Dow Jones Chief Executive Officer Les Hinton.

More changes are coming at the Journal, Thomson said. Next week, the newspaper will form a news hub to share information across the Journal's printed and online versions, Dow Jones Newswires and MarketWatch, he said.

The newspaper will also introduce a revamped WSJ.com, featuring an expanded free section with easier access for readers, Thomson said.

Over six months, the newspaper will introduce new features in the fee-based part of its Web site and charge ``a lot more,'' Thomson said in an interview. The site will provide different tiers of financial news for readers who will be able to customize what they read, similar to the way users can input their preferences on a MyYahoo page, he said.

News Corp., also the owner of Barron's and MySpace, competes with Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, in providing financial data and news.

News Corp. Class A shares, down 31 percent this year, were little changed at $14.16 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gillian Wee in New York at gwee3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 3, 2008 16:31 EDT