According to the Wall Street Journal, coffee shops in New York are starting to cut back on laptops -- by reducing WiFi privileges, removing outlets, or banning the machines outright. This article has spawned a vast number of spin-off pieces and conversations across the Web. [more inside]
posted by Shepherd on Aug 7, 2009 - 100 comments

Demon Denim. Feeding off a earlier column in the WSJ by Daniel Akst, who wrote, "no fabric has ever been so insidiously effective at undermining national discipline," conservative columnist George Will takes up the (denim-free) banner in the crusade to rid America of "the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche."
posted by Liver on Apr 16, 2009 - 158 comments

"We're not selling here -- we're hunting!" The young man or woman at the mall kiosk who grabs your shoulder and says "Can I have twenty seconds of your time to show you something amazing?" might be a young Israeli saving up for a pre-army jaunt to Asia or South America. The U.S. kiosk trade has become popular enough in Israel to inspire a folk-rock song by musician and kiosk veteran Rami Feinstein. The Wall Street Journal offers a generally admiring profile of the Israeli "natural-born closers." The Capital Times, in Madison, WI, wishes they'd buzz off.
posted by escabeche on Dec 3, 2008 - 115 comments

"For the first time on record, the rate of new cancer cases and the cancer death rate are both falling in America. There appear to be several reasons why this is happening, but perhaps the most important is also the simplest: Over the past several decades, men started smoking less." But is obesity the tobacco of the 21st century? Well, Hollywood has tobacco's back. How to lower smoking rates? Taxing cigarettes is the single-most effective way to lower smoking rates, particularly among youth. Check out the correlation on this map.
posted by cashman on Dec 1, 2008 - 33 comments

In a recent Wall Street Journal story asking if Obama is "too fit" to be president, the reporter uses a Yahoo! message board to find sources (Google cache of the post). (via DF)
posted by starman on Aug 2, 2008 - 153 comments

The Wall Street Journal invites kids onto lawn. [more inside]
posted by Sys Rq on Jul 10, 2008 - 63 comments

In the wake of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal, several of the paper's top reporters have left for safer ground. Among them is Tara Parker-Pope, who joined the New York Times on October 3rd. Her blog, Well, currently accounts for three of the paper's top ten e-mailed stories: in addition to number 1, Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, she has number 5, Shhh...My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me), and number 8, Drug-Resistant Staph: What You Need to Know. Touché Rupert.
posted by alms on Oct 25, 2007 - 23 comments

Want to know the story behind those iconic drawings used by the Wall Street Journal for their mug shots? The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has the scoop. (The site's layout is not the best, but it's worth digging around.) You can see how two artists render the same portrait of Yahoo's Jerry Yang. And read about how the first rendering of Gorbachev left out his signature birthmark. An artist named Kevin Sprouls started it all. Lately, Slate wonders if George Bush is looking a little frowny.
posted by veggieboy on Oct 16, 2007 - 11 comments

A second career? The President pens an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. For extra credit compare and contrast attitudes towards bipartisanship in the op-ed to this speech or this one. Gold star for the best answer.
posted by jourman2 on Jan 3, 2007 - 60 comments

Pharmaceuticals have many tricks up their sleeves.
posted by reverenddrjice on Dec 2, 2005 - 21 comments

Doctors suing patients Are you angry and upset because of what a doctor did or did not do during a medical procedure? Did you express your anger online? Now doctors are suing patients for expressing their anger online.
posted by halekon on Sep 17, 2005 - 31 comments

Tip and Shout: 2'' Tape: "But last Friday, [Jeff] Tweedy hit a snag as he prepared for a session in Wilco's Chicago studio space: Nobody could find any of the professional-grade audio tape the band is accustomed to using."
posted by pfafflin on Jan 13, 2005 - 37 comments

She's baaaaaaaack! Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose private e-mail to friends lamented the dangers of reporting in Iraq and criticized the Bush administration's war policy, is returning to her war beat next week for the first time since her missive sparked a controversy in October. Reports that she was being punished by her newspaper for the e-mail were apparently false. Her e-mail brought her unexpected attention, raised issues about whether reporters covering Iraq were telling the whole story, prompted some introspection in journalism circles, and led a variety of news outlets to confirm her dour outlook (last link is a reprinted NYT article). Previously discussed here.
posted by owenville on Dec 3, 2004 - 4 comments

Remembrance of Books Past, by Ray Bradbury
"Why not a sequel to 'Fahrenheit 451' in which all the great books are remembered by the Wilderness People and are finally reprinted from memory. What then?"
"Wouldn't it be," he continued, "that all would be misremembered, none would come forth in their original garb? Wouldn't they be longer, shorter, taller, fatter, disfigured, or more beautiful? "
[if possible, use the Wall Street Journal link - subsription required]
posted by MzB on Feb 4, 2004 - 24 comments

"They get unfairly maligned simply because of their past association with me," said Dick Cheney in a Fox Radio interview. No, I think it's the graft and corruption but that's just my opinion. WSJ reports that Halliburton Employees Take took $6M in kickbacks in awarding Iraq contracts. In every {war|conflict|police action} I'm sure there's been some amount of war profiteering, but this really takes the falafel. There was so much controversy surrounding this war that this finding brings into question the whole Bush-Cheney-Halliburton Old Boy Network. Check out all Halliburton news at Topix.net.
posted by cpfeifer on Jan 23, 2004 - 7 comments

Harlan Ellison vs. AOL This case has been discussed before, but here's an update from the Wall Street Journal.
posted by sassone on Jul 22, 2003 - 73 comments

"Buying an SUV is partly an act of fantasy." In the interest of throwing gasoline on the fire, I present David Brooks, SUV apologist, in the Wall Street Journal.
posted by serafinapekkala on Jan 21, 2003 - 50 comments

Want to talk about GOP? Not in the WSJ! The latest WSJ internal style guide has banned the use of GOP (Grand Old Party) as a reference that too few would be familar with. Republicans seem to find it amusing, considering their domain name, however. I'd just been speaking about this to a colleague a few days ago when someone at lunch asked what a GOP was. Do the other mediums follow suit? Is this as big a deal as some publications using the term "homicide bomber" instead of "suicide bomber?"
posted by djspicerack on Dec 2, 2002 - 34 comments

South High School Sucks but not for the normal reasons that most students give. Apparently four students were suspended for a poll on their website, "the multiple-choice topic of whether a certain assistant principal at the school most closely resembles a witch, Big Bird, or a dead body." David tells CityPages.com that school officials told him the poll is a "death threat." So they've taken the ball and done something positive with it. They've been mentioned in the WSJ opinion pages, and they're starting a coalition that's attempting to help kids practice free speech in their schools.
posted by Ufez Jones on Apr 8, 2002 - 14 comments

Middle East war predictions "..what we are witnessing looks like joint preparations by the Palestinian Authority, Syria, its Lebanese client, Iraq, and Iran, for war on a regional scale, against both Israel and U.S. interests. I fear we may face a major, sudden, external assault on Israel, meant to precede U.S. action against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and indeed prevent the U.S. from going there by enmiring it in the defence of Israel. [From The Ottowa Citizen, lead link in today's Wall Street Journal Best of the Web]
posted by Voyageman on Mar 27, 2002 - 14 comments

Sneak peek at the new look for the Wall Street Journal "Print buyers were presented with non-disclosure agreements when shown the pages...No media buyer was shown the front page, redesigned for the first time since the 1944." Pretty esoteric subject, but still remarkable how much influence the "look and feel " of a newspaper can have on its reader. Hard to imagine the WSJ looking different. It must be a very tough endeavor to get right. (IMHO the recently revamped Int Herald Tribune looks way messier and more confusing than before.)
posted by Voyageman on Mar 25, 2002 - 17 comments

Danny pearl, did the wall street journal endanger their own reporter. The handing over of a laptop to the C.I.A and the department of Defense may hve led to the singling out of a Journal employee.
posted by johnnyboy on Mar 5, 2002 - 2 comments

Muslim states hate us because their culture is backwards and corrupt, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial. The writer, tired of America-bashing, explores the inferiority complex of the Arab world: "Like Third World Marxists of the 1960s, who put blame for their own self-inflicted misery upon corporations, colonialism and racism--anything other than the absence of real markets and a free society--the Islamic intelligentsia recognizes the Muslim world's inferiority vis-à-vis the West, but it then seeks to fault others for its own self-created fiasco. Government spokesmen in the Middle East should ignore the nonsense of the cultural relativists and discredited Marxists and have the courage to say that they are poor because their populations are nearly half illiterate, that their governments are not free, that their economies are not open, and that their fundamentalists impede scientific inquiry, unpopular expression and cultural exchange." via kuro5hin
posted by swift on Feb 26, 2002 - 36 comments

"Why we talk about Reagan"
posted by bunnyfire on Feb 8, 2002 - 81 comments

The latest on the WSJ Reporter ... Damn. "The group that claims it has kidnapped a Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan has sent e-mail to news organisations threatening to kill him within 24 hours unless the U.S. government released Pakistani prisoners held in the Afghan war."
posted by MidasMulligan on Jan 30, 2002 - 20 comments

The WSJ's 6 clues that the recession is lessening.
Number 6: Gary Condit is back in the news. (MSNBC link)
posted by o2b on Jan 4, 2002 - 7 comments

"How Bush should spend his windfall of political capital." Many links have been posted in the past 10 days to cheap political opportunism in the wake of 0.81- but this takes the cake: an op-ed calling for Bush to explicitly exploit this tragedy to pass bigger tax cuts, ANWR drilling, etc. Yep, another sickening WSJ effort; I'm sure the families of the victims will take heart in knowing their loved ones are, in fact, a "windfall of political capital" for Bush. (sorry for the two-front-page-posts-in-a-row, btw)
posted by hincandenza on Sep 21, 2001 - 13 comments

WSJ/NBC conducted a pretty extensive poll about the state of the country ranging from taxes to energy concerns to the Golden Dollar. I got the phone call to participate in the poll on Saturday and the questions were thought provoking and relevant...here are the results.
posted by Princess Buttercup on Mar 8, 2001 - 5 comments

Nader editorial in the WSJ (with another guy). They were prolly watered down a lot and given that "two cheers for the president" sub-title, but Nader still seems remarkably sanguine about Bush's plans to rein in corporate welfare.
posted by kliuless on Mar 7, 2001 - 4 comments

The Greenwood Position. Partisan perhaps, but will Peggy Noonan's latest OpEd in the WSJ be a rallying cry for frustrated conservatives? She offers compelling arguments and solid suggestions for proactive redress. Talk amongst yourselves.
posted by netbros on Nov 25, 2000 - 6 comments

Attack of the Killer MS Flacks Has anyone seemed to notice that shortly after the Wall Street Journal broke the story about the Microsoft hackers that the NYT became a voice for MS when they first claimed that no source code was stolen and next when they seemed to remember they tracked the entire attack for all 12 days.
posted by bkdelong on Oct 30, 2000 - 2 comments

Double Entendre and the Design of Public Lavatories. From a recent Wall St. Journal article on the architecture of bathrooms...

"Bathrooms are for more than just relieving the kidneys," says Ian Schrager, owner of 16 boutique hotels in New York, Los Angeles, London and elsewhere. "It's about someone coming out with a smile on their face and wanting to tell their friends about it because it's fun."

As one of the promoters behind Studio 54, I imagine Mr. Scharger is no doubt aware of the double meaning of the above quote. The article is interesting, but of course you need a subscription to read it, as such, I have taken the liberty of posting the article myself without the WSJ's permission.
posted by lockecito on Jul 24, 2000 - 5 comments

Remember the Microsoft story the Wall Street Journal hastily yanked without explanation from its Web site earlier this week? They missed a copy.
posted by jjg on Apr 14, 2000 - 0 comments