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."
"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."
posted by Max Hartshorne at 11:41 PM
2 Comments:
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 www.sprouls.com was the illustrator whose portrait style the wsj adopted. He is the leading stipple portrait artist in the illustration field today.
Talking about the famous Wall Street Journal stipple portraits, you can't go on without mentioning their head illustrator since 1987, Noli Novak www.nolinovak.com
Amazing 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.
Post a Comment
<< Home