In the Washington Post this morning, David Ignatius seems to blame problems at the Wall Street Journal on the enterprise and energy of its editorial page. The paper was great in the 1980s — when he was there — Ignatius writes, and then lost its way in the 90s. Management changed, people got fat and happy, the stories were lackluster, the headlines weren’t snappy. Meanwhile, as the news pages lost a step, the editorial page was running hard:

The Journal’s editorial page increasingly did its own reporting, with equal portions of journalistic hustle and ideological spin, and it often overshadowed the news side. I suspect that helped undermine the franchise. Advertisers, in the end, perhaps weren’t enthralled with a newspaper distinguished by vitriolic right-wing attack editorials.

Put aside, for a moment, whether WSJ editorials are “vitriolic right-wing attack editorials.” Even if you accept that characterization, there are newspapers that publish vitriolic left-wing attack editorials, and they are suffering economically, too. And in any event, what would Ignatius have the Journal editorial page do? Say, “Gee, this is a great story, or that is a great story, but we sure wouldn’t want to get ahead of the news pages?” Especially when the news pages are losing their zip?