Good riddance, Wall Street Journal

The BBQ Pit
1

My WSJ subscription was a gift. I called to find out the status of it yesterday. Don’t look on the website for a number, however; they won’t give you one. I found a number for the advertising dept. on the site and got the other number from there.

At any rate, a cranky man took my call. I didn’t seem interested in selling me a new subscription–at all, but rather told me in a chiding tone that it had run in March and they had tried to contact me, blah. Hey, it’s Wall Street, you fuck: you’re supposed to be into money enough to sell me the goddamn paper. I was the one who asked how much it cost and decided not to fork over $200+ for another year.

Good riddance! Well, mostly. Let’s look at the pros and cons:

Pro

The two front page “interesting stuff columns” sometimes make for good reading. But I don’t expect my newspaper to be a source of entertainment; I can get most of that on the Net for free.

The basic business news in the front section is OK. The int’l news in the same section is focused and of greater marginal use than the rest (and is harder to find on the Net than general biz news). Still, the value here is not overwhelming.

The “Marketplace” section can be OK. It is erratic but sometimes has interesting stories on new products, and some of the semi-regular columns are OK.

Con

The biggest con is that I find the WSJ hard to get into, and when I do so I spend too much time with the paper that does not end up feeling wisely spent. I attribute this overall impression to a lack of news density in the paper. It is not easy to get quick grip on the information that is useful to me.

Of course, you can ignore any part of a paper that you choose to, but if you are ignoring too much then you are not getting value for your money. If there are extras, I want to enjoy them, not toss them out.

I also want a good Op-Ed page, but the WSJ’s is an execrable shame. Charitably speaking, it has a Conservative tilt, and I am interested in keeping abreast of intelligent Conservative thought. But sans the charity the WSJ’s Op-Ed page is right-wing knee-jerkery or outright nut-jobbery 75% of the time. It’s unreadable.

The WSJ’s extras are, overall, shit. The “Weekend Journal” is yuppie froof of the first order. I mean, talk about Qualmless Conspicuous Consumption. Shameless.

I think I can by with the Indianapolis Business Journal, a hard-core biz pape that gives me the local info I require (excellent coverage of commercial real estate, my field). Biz news from Yahoo, etc., and the Indianapolis Star for additional national and local stories (a suprisingly good paper overall).

The Wall Street Journal–a certain few things will be missed, but overall not worth the money or time.

2

If you want to read the Wall Street Journal, all you have to do is go to the nearest public library and ask. Unless your local branch is a real hole in the wall, chances are very good the library has it, and you can read it for free.

3

Yeah, but it wasn’t just the money factor, it was also the time factor.

4

To each his own. We love the WSJ and I’m quite happy to shell out $200+/year for it.

The editorial pages are too “Conservative”? Dude… it’s the Wall Street Journal. What did you expect?

5

I don’t mind conservative. I mind wingnut bullshit.

You can tell the difference, can’t you? Thousands can’t.

6

Aeschines, WSJ’s Op-Ed section is the soul compared to the Investor’s Business Daily. I got a free trial once so that I could have online access to a report on a company, and… well, this socialist wanted to hide under his blanket.

7

ARRRGH! That was suppsoed to be “the soul of reason”! I was not implying that WSJ is spiritual or fond of collard greens.

8

::whimper::

9

I would be surprised too, since the Star was a fermenting pile of right-wing dung when I lived there (until a few years ago Dan Quayle (grandson of the publisher) was on the board of directors).

10

One mans “wingnut bullshit” is another mans conservatism. This complaint is akin to subscribing to Socialist Worker’s and complaining about their “wingnut bullshit”. Again… it’s Socialist Worker’s - what would one expect?

11

The good thing about the WSJ, in my opinion, is that it has some of the better journalists around. These men and women are, for the most part, real pros who write good stories and get to the heart of the issue.

Also, because of who the paper’s audience is, they actually tell the whole story without embellishment in most cases. The powerful types who are the Journal’s key audience want the facts without candy-coating or positive spin. For this reason, i think the WSJ is probably more reliable on a lot of issues than many other papers. And i think this is true of the financial press in many countries; the Financial Times is similarly good. Hell, even far-left political activist and media critic Noam Chomsky has said on quite a few occasions that he goes to the business press first when he wants to find out what’s really going on.

I agree with the OP about the op-ed pages, though. Dribbling idiocy, verging on raving lunacy, leavened only by utter selfishness and lack of concern for anything but money and power.

12

I get The Best of the Web e-mailed free each day. I love it. It’s part of opinionjournal.com.

13

If you really want to see Conspicuous Consumption enshrined in print, just check out the N.Y. Times. The front news section is larded with big ads for $20,000 diamond necklaces and furs, plus the Travel section and the Sunday magazine are jammed with ads for multimillion dollar estates in the suburbs. This from the paper that whines about how it and the rest of the news media aren’t devoting enough attention to Africa and its problems.

Maybe if they downsized the Bergdorf Goodman ads and spent a little less time covering the daily struggle for existence in the Hamptons, there’d be space to report on Africa.

14

My mind got stuck on the $200 subscription price. I mean, it’s a goddamn newspaper. Does it give you head while you read it or what?

15

Well, it sounds like a lot when you pay it all in one hit, but that’s only about 60s a day, which is pretty cheap for newspapers nowdays.

What does a full subscription to the New York Times cost? I’ll bet it’s more than $200, especially if you get the weightlifters’ Sunday edition with all 237 sections.

16

Maybe this isn’t the place for this question, but what the hell.

What’s the deal with the WSJ and photographs, anyway? :confused:

17

TRADITION!

More seriously, it’s just part of what the core readership expects. Newspapers are less willing to risk angry letters than almost any other media organization, hence the fact my paper still runs ‘Peanuts’ on an infinite loop (and ‘Hagar the Horrible’ on what feels like an inifinite loop) instead of clearing out the comic deadweight and getting ‘Get Fuzzy’ in on a daily basis.

grumble grumble rackin-frackin

18

What do you mean? The fact that there are pictures in the paper, or the fact that they don’t put them on the front page?