Soft News and Hard Candy

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal debuted its much-hyped Weekend Edition. In plunging into the weekend space with a breaking news and news-you-can-use package, the Journal hopes to draw the sort of readers and advertisers who helped make its “Personal Journal” such a success. “Personal Journal,” the fourth section, added to the paper in 2002, focuses on cars, books, entertainment, wine, food, travel, personal finance, and other aspects of the “good life.” In this Press Box, Jack Shafer examined the Journal’s history and argued that “Personal Journal” was an attempt to sweeten and lighten the paper. “In the Journal’s half-century-plus migration from Wall Street to Main Street to Rodeo Drive,” Shafer writes, “it may have finally strayed too far from its ‘core mission’—as business types put it—with ‘Personal Journal.’ “