WSJ.com
At least one version of The Wall Street Journal’s mobile website appears stuck in the past. The local “New York” section on Wednesday night was displaying three top headlines for stories originally published on June 2. The outdated stories were apparently only visible to owners of a few handsets, including the BlackBerry and HTC, as the site automatically redirects visitors to different device-optimized mobile templates.
That part of the mobile site is likely automated, so the static content was probably due to a broken RSS feed.
The fact that the problem was in the New York section of the mobile site is ironic, considering the recent newspaper war between the Journal and The New York Times over dominance of the Manhattan market.
The glitch brings to mind a question posed by Robert Niles back in January at OJR.org: Is anyone on staff actually reading the mobile version of your news website?
In this case, the Journal’s core audience, business users, are more than likely BlackBerry owners. And while the Journal offers a BlackBerry app as well as dedicated apps for other mobile devices, a fair number of their users probably still browse the mobile Web.
We’ve asked the Journal about the glitch, which was fixed around 7 p.m. ET. We’ll update this item as soon as we hear back.
