David Lidsky of Fast Company has some unkind words for the new Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal:

"Here's why the Journal's Saturday paper is dead on arrival: There are no surprises whatsoever. At least at this point, there's no evidence of a single fresh idea, or even the deft execution of a well-worn chestnut of an idea. It's a focus-grouped, advertiser-friendly confection with nothing that I can't get in hundreds of other venues. What the Journal seems to have fallen victim to is the kind of insular thinking that kills so many entrenched enterprises: It seems to believe that there's value in the information being delivered by the Wall Street Journal, as if that were enough to carry the day. The decided lack of splash here is also another tale of the downside of hype. If you can't live up to it, the backlash isn't going to be pretty."

According to Lidsky, the "Pursuits" section of the Weekend Edition was especially odious -- what he called "a juiced up version of Personal Journal that's basically a cliche of every entertainment or general-interest magazine's front of the book and every "weekend" section of a major-market daily newspaper."

Unfortunately for Mr. Lidsky, it appears that he doesn't take much of an interest in the financial markets, since there were more than a few new features that got my attention. In the "Money & Investing" section, there was a first-rate article on "New Tools to Hedge Your Home." In the "Pursuits" section, we agree that the article called "When Tough Guys Want Comfy Shoes" was a bit on the cheesy side, but there was also a book review of a new book about Google. The Money & Investing section also has a brand-new column ("Green Thumb") on matters of personal finance. There's also expanded coverage of Friday's financial markets performance and a new "Breaking Views" column that has insights about Wall Street inside dealings (this weekend, it was speculation as to whether Carl Icahn's takeover bid would impact Time Warner's stock price).