WSJ.com is Free Today

The Wall Street Journal came out with their new redesign today.

NO TIME
I don't think there is enough time in the day to read everything they have written in today's issue.

Has anyone tried? Does anyone actually read every article?

The newspaper has has changed from being skimmable, to being like the Sunday New York Times where you need to block off a period of time to read and digest everything.

TOO FEW WORDS PER COLUMN
One thing I noticed is that the font is very easy to read, but there don't put enough words in each column.

You can compare the online version of this article to the printed one.

Iraqi Leader's Past of Shiite Activism Undermines Pledge to Heal Rifts - WSJ.com. Free access today. Free on newsstands too I hear.

In print it looks like this:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- His only son was
getting married on Friday, but the
Iraqi prime minister couldn't stay long
at the wedding.

Online, all the words of this sentence are on one line, except for the last word which wraps to a new line.

It gets worse when you turn to the continuation page. Once there, each line has only 3-6 words on it. I think that's a lot of work for your eyes, shifting back and forth all that time.

Online, each line has around 30 words on it.

Can someone explain to me why newspapers have many narrow columns instead of paragraphs that cross the page?

The shrunken Wall Street Journal