How is Dealbook different from the rest of the NYTimes biz coverage?

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon writes Tuesday about the relaunch of the New York Times business blog Dealbook and has some questions about its operations.

Salmon writes, “There’s more going on here than a new silly logo. A lot of open questions remain, and I’m holding out a smidgen of hope that if I pose them in public, Andrew Ross Sorkin might embrace his bloggier tendencies and respond in kind.

1. What’s the difference between Dealbook and Business Day? Dealbook prominently features, on every page, a full masthead of 20 contributors: this is much more branding of individual journalists than the NYT has traditionally gone in for, beyond a few star columnists. Is this the crack finance team, writing for the industry elite rather than a broad national audience? The official NYT press release certainly hints that it is, talking as it does about ‘the C-Suite audience’ and ‘industry leaders in finance, banking, brokerage, legal and real estate.’
2. What’s with Dealbook’s print presence? The franchise now has its own page of the NYT’s B section every day, in an arrangement which looks very similar to the WSJ’s Heard on the Street franchise, which has a miserable web presence. Is Dealbook looking to be the NYT equivalent of Heard? And if so, whither the Reuters Breakingviews column which appears earlier in the section? With Dealbook featuring opinionated columns from the likes of Steven Davidoff and Jesse Eisinger — not to mention Sorkin himself — what need is there for Breakingviews as well?

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