The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Bellyflop
National Journal’s William Powers skewers Dow Jones’ newest edition…their much touted Weekend Journal.
“Deep breath, and here goes: I love The Wall Street Journal. Love the archaic text-heavy look; the little hand-done portraits of story subjects (“hedcuts,” to the trade); the What’s News column; the formulaic yet delightful front-page features (“A-heds”); the market-speak; the straight-ahead Washington and international coverage. And, ideology aside, the paper’s opinion pages are a marvel of cogent argument and tight editing — for pure craft, no liberal paper can touch them.”
Then Powers reviews their new Weekend paper.
“In one of the more spectacular bellyflops of modern media history, The Journal published a newspaper without a single inspired or memorable moment — a paper that felt like work to read, on the very day most of us are not working.
It’s like a scary cyborg of the Journal–convincing, lifelike resemblance, but no heart or soul inside. Perhaps, as the weeks pass, it will learn to be better. But don’t hold your breath: This is the newspaper business, where getting new products horribly wrong is a way of life.”
October 7, 2005 @ 1:05 am
I love the journal too. I actually miss a steady article that was on the front of the second section called the orphan. It was a small well written human interest story. I wish they would find the space for them again. I also know that Kevin Sprouls http://www.sprouls.com was the illustrator whose portrait style the wsj adopted. He is the leading stipple portrait artist in the illustration field today.
November 13, 2005 @ 5:17 pm
Talking about the famous Wall Street Journal stipple portraits, you can’t go on without mentioning their head illustrator since 1987, Noli Novak http://www.nolinovak.comAmazing stuff.I also found out she is the person who teaches and trains new illustrators at the Journal the stipple portrait technique.As for the Journal …. I doubt such an established publication with such a long history and reputation, wouldn’t survive the bumps on the road of change. I quite like the new, updated look and the content. For me, the writing always was and still is top notch.