WSJ Harmonization Watch: An Ongoing Series

- Hypothesis: Under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch and the editorship of Robert Thomson, the Journal is deliberately bringing its news operations into closer alignment with its editorial views.
- Sub-hypothesis: You don't see this shift in the line-by-line content of the stories themselves but rather in the headlines, subheads, and placement of the stories in the paper. That is, we're looking at editors' work rather than reporters'.
Being hypotheses, these are subject to testing and disproof. Toward the end of testing hypotheses, here is an interesting new data point.The first paragraph in a WSJ news story this weekend describes how the Obama administration is planning its next term:
The headline for this story uses a different verb to describe what the administration is up to.