The much-anticipated Wall Street Journal print redesign is launching tomorrow, as this long Newsweek story writes about, including positioning it as Rupert Murdoch’s full frontal assault on the New York Times (NYSE: NYT). The series of editorial and design changes, which is more evolutionary than revolutionary, will include:
-- lots more news stories on politics and national and international affairs on page one.
-- the entire A section will become as a catchall for general news.
-- the second section, Marketplace, now becomes home to the Journal’s coverage of corporate America, getting its own ascendancy of sorts.
-- the third section, Money and Investing, remains the showcase for news of the financial markets and investing.
-- the op-ed section will grow to three pages from two.
-- a culture section is under development for a fall debut in the Journal’s weekend edition, and Murdoch has added a weekly sports page.
-- the online redesign is slated to launch this fall, not in the next few weeks as we reported first. Meanwhile, the umbrella, as we reported, has now started appearing on all WSJ Digital Network sites, which includes WSJ.com, Barrons.com, MarketWatch and others.

As for Murdoch’s own involvement in WSJ, if you had any doubts, here it is: “Rather than entrust the job of all this to subordinates, Murdoch has been devoting half his time since acquiring Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) to reshaping the paper. He has become a regular and jarring presence in the Journal newsroom: ever since he appeared unannounced on Easter--to, as he puts it, ‘set an example’--top editors have been dragging themselves into the Journal’s headquarters across from Ground Zero on Sundays.”