The WSJ has appears to have lined up extensive commitments from two NYT staples, Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf Goodman. The former spent about $1 million in the WSJ in ‘09—compared to the nearly $18 million Bloomingdale’s lavished on the NYT—while the latter spent nothing in the Journal and $1.4 million in the Times.

SEE ALSO: NYTimes.com Reaches Out To NYU For Hyperlocal East Village Site

Just having a few pages devoted to NYC won’t alter certain advantages that the NYT has over its rival. For one thing, despite Rupert Murdoch’s efforts to broaden WSJ’s scope beyond business news by highlighting political and national coverage, the paper’s demo is still more narrowly male and professional compared to the more general NYT readership. That will continue to influence advertisers.

At the very least, though, the WSJ is likely to cut into the NYT’s near-solitary hold on high-end retailers. And the paper’s website has been fighting for new readers and potential advertisers by building up its hyperlocal NY/NJ sites. Still, the WSJ isn’t just placing its bets in the New York region. The paper has followed the NYT into San Francisco with a special local edition of its own, which is expected to make its pitches to national retailers more attractive.