I've been working on obtaining a fairly decent representation of the WSJ style hedcuts images, thanks in part to Rob A.'s instructions found here. Pay particular attention to his "Not Quite" post in that thread.
640 x 480 at 300 dpi (appears more "Cartoonish")
Same exact technique at 1600 x 1200 300 dpi (a better representation, imho).
On the top two images, I ran Photocomix's suggested settings on anisotropic smoothing in G'MIC, then raised the brightness and contrast a little bit from the Colors menu.
One thing I have noticed when using lower resolution images is that no matter what your pattern looks like, the hedcut image usually ends up looking pretty much the same. The higher the resolution, the more defined the patterns can look. So, if you want crispness, high resolution is the way to go. Or you could always ink your own. 
Whoever writes up a hedcut/stippling plug-in for GIMP will be revered the world over, particularly if its TSP Voronoi in technique.
Flaming Pear's India Ink using Basketweave (Normal mode):
Although the image is actually closer to the technique, its fairly rough looking, but then again I didn't make any attempts to maximize the image's potential. This is a direct filter setting on a color photo with a hard render (i.e. plug-in defaults with no other effects involved).
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