• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 8, 2010

The fierce competition between The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal is about to get even fiercer with WSJ's planned launch of a new leisure and lifestyle section. Appearing Saturdays and scheduled to debut sometime this fall, the new 15-17 page section represents an (almost) head-to-head rival for the Times' own weekend leisure coverage in its Sunday paper, reports Ad Age. 

Like many of WSJ's recent forays into non-business coverage, the new lifestyle and leisure section will target luxury advertisers. Editorial will be led by Deborah Needleman, formerly editor-in-chief of Conde Nast's defunct shelter title Domino. She appeared to hint at its tone with her praise for "the playfulness of the British weekend papers," including their "fun and irreverence."

This description of the planned section may come as a surprise to many observers of the newspaper industry, as "playful," "fun," and "irreverent" are not adjectives often applied to the WSJ. While no connection was explicitly stated, Needleman's reference to British weekend newspapers could reflect a directive from News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch, who bought Dow Jones in 2007 and built his media empire with the acquisition of British tabloids like The Sun and high-end newspapers The Times and The Sunday Times.

The rivalry between the WSJ and the NYT has been heating up over the last year. The WSJ has abandoned its old position as the respectable, slightly stodgy newspaper of record for business affairs to try and steal readers and advertisers from the NYT.

In April, WSJ introduced a new section focused on New York, threatening to take as much as 10% to 20% of NYT's Manhattan-focused retail advertising, prompting a mini-ad war in media trade publications. The 12-page New York section employs about 35 editorial staffers and covers real estate, culture, business, sports and metro news.

The NYT's vulnerability to the WSJ attack is due, at least in part, to its own aggressive cost-cutting campaign over the last couple of years. In 2008, the newspaper eliminated the standalone "Escapes" section, consolidating this with its "Weekend" section. It also cut weekly sections covering New York City, Long Island, Westchester County, New Jersey and Connecticut, consolidating all these stories in a new, single section that appears on Sundays.

Then in March 2009, it stopped publishing the "City" section, but said the content would still appear in the paper's "New York" section. And in September 2009, the paper axed the "Metro" section, which began publication in 1991, but dwindled in size in recent years. "Metro" stories are now appended to the paper's first section, after international and national news.