A magazine is a window, hopefully Windexed, into a certain kind of content. We try our hardest to frame that window, keep it freshly painted, set it off with curtains and geraniums. But the importance of the window is what you see through the glass. One obvious aspect of the redesigned magazine is that we've reorganized the content. It's pretty simple. Like Gaul, the magazine is now divided into three parts: a much expanded section about dealmakers up front, containing longtime fan faves such as Movers & shakers and Deal diary, but including new sections that deepen our coverage of flesh-and-blood, one-trouser-leg-at-a-time denizens of the deal economy; a middle section of longer profiles and analyses; and, gathered in one convenient drawer behind the features, our popular columns -- with the lone exception of this one, which bobs after the table of contents like a soul lost in limbo. Call it a conversation piece.

The second, and far more important, aspect of this effort, involves what we refer to in the newsroom snortingly as substance. Every issue of The Deal magazine that we assemble represents a real-time stab at capturing a complex, changing, abstract financial reality; it's inevitably a sketch, not a photograph or a film. No one can get it all, or even come close; and if they did, no reader could apprehend more than a fragment of it. But for the eight years or so we've been writing, editing and publishing this magazine, we have labored, issue after issue, to package stories that analyzed, explained and illuminated key parts of our can't-stay-still world. Do we always succeed? No way; it's not possible. But we keep coming back and, in all modesty, we've learned a few things over the years. We believe we have an edge over others in deal journalism: We pioneered this kind of reporting, we have arguably -- hell no, certainly -- the most sophisticated audience in the game, and we are able to feed off daily content produced for The Daily Deal and our online news service, The Deal Pipeline. And we have a clear focus. Yes, this redesign hopes to create a sharper, more relevant and, as the real estate crowd says, more contemporary look (curb appeal!), with more beaming faces and a simpler floor plan, but that's not what really matters. Content really matters.

Content is continuity. Those regular readers (pat yourself on the back) of both our daily publications and magazine over the past topsy-turvy decade will recognize, I hope, a consistency in our approach and style, no matter where we put the divan and the estimable Jolie. Over the years we have pushed the frontiers of the deal economy -- bolstering our coverage of financing markets, digging deeper into the middle market, chasing corporate dealmakers down dark alleys -- but the core remains intact: M&A, private equity, bankruptcy, venture capital, the law, regulation, Wall Street. We have always tried to write about these subjects clearly, without cynicism, excessive jargon or gasbagginess, all the while attempting that most treacherous of journalistic feats: to be fair, accurate, transparent and, despite hoots from the peanut gallery of ideologues and cranks, to at least attempt that elusive anachronism, objectivity. All these, in this fallen world, are ideals. So, by all means, try out the new layout, lounge on the divan, admire the focal point. But judge us by our content.