COURTING THE BOBOS: William Powers at the "National Journal" writes about what recent changes at the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" really mean:

The changes at The Times and The Journal may appear to be cosmetic and company-specific, but they are the latest emblems of a broad and significant shift in journalism and in society at large....Alas, we are in the realm of that increasingly popular brand of journalism I call "Lifestyle Voyeurism," the rules of which require a certain tantalizing opacity as to the nitty-gritty details of income and net worth. ...Welcome to the New New Journalism, which is all about pulling in the richest slice of American society -- the people who buy $60,000 cars without blinking, cook on Viking ranges, know an Opus One from a Chateau Ausone, and live a kind of good life that's unheard-of in most of the world. Thanks to the unmatched prosperity of the United States, there are now lots of these people, millions of millionaires, so many that they have begun to form a community all their own. ... It's the community that national advertisers are desperate to reach. Which is why our two most elite national papers are scrambling to reach them, too.... While the changes at The Times and The Wall Street Journal serve a number of purposes -- The Journal's renovations opened up more room on its front page for breaking news, for example -- the purpose they share is to keep this golden readership happy.