bookofjoe MoneyMaker™ — Episode 2: Rupert Murdoch takes my suggestions and axes the weakest links in the WSJ's Weekend Journal

Amazing!

Just one week after my detailed suggestions on how to improve his Saturday feature section, today's iteration reveals he's done precisely what I urged, completely eliminating two of the three areas of print deadwood I observed were simply taking up space.

Here's the relevant part of last Saturday's post:

Three ways to instantly improve the Wall Street Journal

3) Bag the entire second page. Who cares about what five films Kim Cattrall considers her favorite romantic comedies? If Murdoch wants to lower the average age of his readers from the geriatric park set, stuff like this has got to disappear. It certainly doesn't warrant nearly half a page.

The Art report about jitters in the art market, rehashing the week's auction news, is tired.

And Picks Online, offering links to the paper's own art blog, is irrelevant to the reader holding the dead tree version.

2) Power Tables, which occupies a full quarter page — above the fold, no less — is from the days of Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell.

Does anyone but those namechecked in the feature really give a hoot about which tables in restaurants masters of the universe prefer?

Give us a break, already.

3) Masterpiece: Anatomy of Classic, in which someone deconstructs a fairy tale or some such foolishness, is so out of place on the back page of the section, where it takes up nearly half the page — once again above the fold — that I can't even begin to imagine what the section editor was thinking.

.....................

Everything feature and column noted above in items 1 & 2 is gone, disappeared and good riddance.

The only thing still standing is "Anatomy of a Classic" on the back page — but at least now it's not about some book of fairytales.

Good job, Murdoch.

Even if you didn't have the courtesy to thank me.

I understand how it is.

Face and shame and all are the driving forces for the great majority of actions taken by all of us.

In that respect at least, you're hoi polloi.

Oh, joe, you're way too full of yourself.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Really?

I'm with the late, great Gilda Radner and Carl Jung — there are no coincidences.