Critic: Saturday Wall Street Journal is a beached whale

Hamilton Nolan of PR Week has harsh words for the Wall Street Journal, specifically its new Saturday edition, which debuted last year. He fears that the Saturday edition, plus other changes to the business newspaper, are the beginning of a downslide.

Nolan writes: “The easily accessible index will make negative news buried on the inside pages more accessible to everyone who recognizes the name of those involved. More importantly, a shift in the Journal’s existing focus on companies themselves to more personality-driven coverage has the real potential of detracting from the paper’s well-earned gravitas.

“Combine this with their new and insipid feature-heavy Saturday edition, and the Journal is risking some of its credibility by diluting its sharp business concentration in search of new ads and eyeballs. Easy navigation is great, but it’s a slippery slope down to becoming a Wall Street version of Page Six.”

Read the entire critique here. I have been embarrassed by the Saturday Journal, and have stopped reading it. It doesn’t give me the business news that I want — and expect — from the WSJ.