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Mixed Reviews for Saturday’s Edition of Wall Street Journal

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From Reuters

The Wall Street Journal’s new Weekend Edition delivered a familiar mix of well-written business and lifestyle articles, but some experts said there was still some work to be done on the advertising side.

“It doesn’t look like they’ve broken through to new categories of advertisers, which is one of their objectives,” said Peter Kreisky, a New York media consultant and chairman of the Kreisky Media Consultancy.

Howard Belk, chief creative officer of brand consultants Siegel & Gale, said the weekend paper had a nice assortment of financial and lifestyle-oriented advertising, but he saw a chance to do more.

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“As I looked at it I thought, ‘There is conventional thinking going on here,’ ” Belk said. He said the Weekend Edition seemed to be short on advertisers such as consultants who could catch busy readers at a time when they were free to contemplate complex issues.

“It’s a very high-quality product, but for a debut issue that’s not surprising,” said Bruce Eatroff, a partner at Halyard Capital. “The true test will be 12 weeks from now.”

The new edition posed a logistical problem for the Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co. For months, the paper -- widely read at the office -- has been urging subscribers to let it know if they preferred a different address for Saturday delivery.

The Weekend Edition consists of a section that reports on Friday’s business news, a section on Friday’s financial markets and on personal finance, and “Pursuits,” which contains lifestyle articles.

Eatroff said that if Weekend Edition developed four or five regular features, such as a popular wine column that appears in Friday’s Journal, it could do very well.

John Morton, a newspaper industry consultant and president of Morton Research Inc., said the Journal had to make a nationally distributed publication appeal to readers used to finding local content in their newspapers. “It will be interesting to see how they focus the editorial content of the Saturday paper and make it pertinent to local readers and local markets,” he said.

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Kreisky said he came away disappointed because he saw too much resemblance to the weekday Wall Street Journal.

“I can only think they’re trying to play it safe and they’ve missed an opportunity to redefine themselves on the weekend,” he said.

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