What’s really important about the “rethought” Wall Street Journal isn’t its narrower width or its what-this-story-means boxes or the long, repetitious letters from top management.
What’s really important is that the Journal, unlike so many other
newspapers, knows exactly what it wants to do. In the Journal’s case, that’s breaking news that no one else has. To achieve that single-minded goal, it’s willing to give up or summarize some traditional news that’s available elsewhere and even toss out some stock agate.
When I started paying for my own newspapers after leaving my job, I soon realized that I couldn’t drop the indispensable Journal. I have to wonder if this week’s enterprise is even better than usual because of the launch of the new Journal.
Regardless, I’ve wallowed in this week’s riches that I couldn’t find anywhere else; the story of two guys who got to know Jerry Ford because they remodeled his childhood home (but the slide show with it on WSJ.com wasn’t exactly breakthrough convergence)….the profile of the Micrsoft executive who pushed the company toward the Xbox rather than toward spreadsheets…the overwhelming coverage of the departure of Home Depot’s well-heeled CEO, including a rare Page 1 column about his failures…the cool “Informed Reader,” featuring interesting excerpts from other publications and sites (but drop that headline face, which looks like it belongs on ads and tell us about the sources you’re quoting)…and, thank goodness, no change at all in the wine column (full disclosure: it’s written by long-time friends).
To be honest, none of this is revolutionary journalism any more than it was when Mario Garcia laid a beige screen over the news summaries in an earlier, much-publicized redesign. (What journalists think is revolutionary deserves a separate column.) What IS news is that the Journal realizes it breaks exclusives more regularly than anyone else does and should play to that strength rather than recycling news that everyone has.
Imagine how the insides of other newspapers’ A sections (and, alas, many front pages) would change if other editors were willing to make similarly tough choices.