Sharp-eyed readers of this morning's Wall Street Journal may notice that editor and Briton Robert Thomson has imported to the financial paper not just the starchy crispness of his old Financial Times but a dash of London's Fleet Street, as well. Read to the end of the front-pager on Lehman Brothers shopping itself and you'll find, as Daily Intelligencer did, that the Journal has truly redefined what it means by "Heard On The Street." In addition to being the title of the paper's bread-and-butter finance column, the phrase now literally describes how Journal reporters collect information. From the article:

Outside Lehman's headquarters in midtown Manhattan, employees taking lunch breaks or a few minutes for a smoke early on Thursday afternoon discussed the firm's future. Many sounded dazed. "It's over, man...unless we get bought out in the next 24 hours, it's over," said a young man, in conversation with someone on his cellphone. He said he was a Lehman employee and declined to answer further questions.

At a fast-food vendor across the street, people waiting to order food discussed the dive in Lehman's share price this week, and the latest headlines from CNBC. Outside, a group of three men, wearing Lehman badges and walking back into headquarters, discussed the fallout for other firms on Wall Street. "At some point, where does it stop?" one said, as he headed back to the office.

Intelligencer worries, in the tradition of journalism ethicists, that the workers might have been talking about something else (Project Runway?). The bigger issue, though, is that the quotes kind of suck. They convey that the workers are dazed and panicked, but any information beyond that is suspect, in particular the "it's over" line from the random Lehman employee on a random phone call. And why use it (as we would!) if you have better-sourced information elsewhere in the story (as the WSJ does)?

Surely the WSJ hasn't lost its grip on insiders at firms like Lehman who could provide a real sense of what's going on. But gimmicky reporting could soon convince people otherwise!

[WSJ via Intelligencer]