# The Wall Street Journal

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Published: 2026-10-29T22:23:02.202Z

Updated: 2026-10-29T22:23:02.202Z

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), commonly known as the Journal, is an American newspaper based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance, and operates on a subscription model that requires readers to pay for access to most articles and other content. The Journal is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a divisio

## Key facts

## Overview

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), commonly known as the Journal, is an American newspaper based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance, and operates on a subscription model that requires readers to pay for access to most articles and other content. The Journal is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp. As of 2025, The Wall Street Journal is the largest newspaper in the United States by print circulation, with about 412,000 print subscribers. It has more than four million digital subscribers, the second-most in the nation after The New York Times. The newspaper is one of the United States' newspapers of record. The first issue of the newspaper was published on July 8, 1889. The editorial page of the Journal is typically center-right in its positions, while its news reporting is more centrist. The newspaper has won 39 Pulitzer Prizes.

## Founding and 19th century

A predecessor to The Wall Street Journal was the Kiernan News Agency founded by John J. Kiernan in 1869. In 1880, Kiernan hired Charles H. Dow and Edward D. Jones as reporters. On a recommendation of Collis Potter Huntington, Dow and Jones co-founded their own news service, Dow Jones & Company, with fellow Kiernan reporter Charles Bergstresser. Dow Jones was headquartered in the basement of 15 Wall Street, the same building as Kiernan's company next to the New York Stock Exchange Building. The first products of Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of the Journal, were brief news bulletins, nicknamed flimsies, hand-delivered throughout the day to traders at the stock exchange. In 1883, they were aggregated in a printed daily summary called the Customers' Afternoon Letter, sold for $1.50 per month compared to the $15 a month Dow Jones bulletin service. Dow Jones opened its own printing press at 71 Broadway in 1885. Beginning July 8, 1889, the Afternoon Letter was renamed The Wall Street Journal. The debut issue of the Journal was four pages long, with dimensions of 20 3/4 × 15 1/2 inches and cost of $0.02 per copy. In its early days, the Journal had "a tedious, blow-by-blow account of the day's business without benefit of editing," wrote Edward E. Scharff in 1986. For nearly 40 years, the front page had a four-column format, with the middle two devoted to news briefs and the farther two filled with advertisements for brokerage services. The Journal focused on stories from news wires and listings of stocks and bonds, while occasionally covering sports or politics. One front-page story on the debut edition of The Wall Street Journal was a raw wire report about the boxing match between John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain, with varying accounts of the fight citing The Boston Globe, the Baltimore American, and anonymous sources. Seldom did The Wall Street Journal publish analysis or opinion articles in its early decades. In addition to a private wire to Boston, the Journal had reporters communicate via telegraph from Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Albany, and London. In 1896, the Journal began publishing two separate Dow Jones stock indicies, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Dow Jones Railroad Average. The first morning edition of the Journal was published on November 14, 1898. By the late 1890s, daily circulation reached 7,000. Charles Dow wrote the first "Review and Outlook" column on April 21, 1899, a front-page editorial column explaining stock prices in terms of human nature; Dow's thinking would later be known as the Dow theory. Scharff regarded Dow's essays from 1899 to 1902 as "stock market classics".

## 20th century

In the months before his death in 1902, Dow arranged to sell Dow Jones and the Journal to Clarence W. Barron, the Boston correspondent for the Journal since 1889, for $130,000 (equivalent to $4,837,500 in 2025). Because Barron had financial difficulties, his wife Jessie Waldron Barron made the $2,500 down payment to buy Dow Jones in 1902; Clarence would first own a Dow Jones share about ten years later. Under Barron's ownership, Thomas F. Woodlock was editor of the Journal from 1902 to 1905. By the end of Woodlock's tenure, daily circulation for the Journal rose from 7,000 to 11,000. William Peter Hamilton became lead editorial writer in 1908, a time when the Journal began reflecting the views of Barron. Hamilton wrote what Scharff considered "daily sermons in support of free-market capitalism". Barron and his predecessors were credited with creating an atmosphere of fearless, independent financial reporting—a novelty in the early days of business journalism. In 1921, Barron's, the United States's premier financial weekly, was founded. Scharff described the newspaper in the Barron era as "Wall Street's public defender" against regulatory efforts by the U.S. Congress. Circulation continued to rise, reaching 18,750 to 1920 and 52,000 briefly in 1928, but did not exceed that of its main competitor, The Magazine of Wall Street, which was the leading financial publication of the era. Barron died in 1928, a year before Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that greatly affected the Great Depression in the United States. Barron's descendants, the Bancroft family, would continue to control the company until 2007. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 would be yet another challenge to the Journal on top of Barron's death. William Peter Hamilton died of pneumonia on December 9, 1929, aged 63. Circulation of the Journal, having surpassed 50,000 in 1928, dropped below 28,000 in the 1930s, and the newspaper downsized from 28 to 16 pages in the 1930s as well. Dow Jones president Hugh Bancroft retired in 1932; following his death in 1933, his widow Jane Waldron Bancroft appointed Kenneth Craven "Casey" Hogate as new company president. Hogate envisioned expanding the scope of the Journal to a "more general business paper" beyond stock and bond numbers. Expanding westward, The Wall Street Journal debuted a West Coast edition on October 21, 1929, The Wall Street Journal Pacific Coast Edition. The Pacific Coast Edition focused on California businesses and replicated some items from the regular Wall Street Journal; however, its circulation never exceeded 3,000, and the Great Depression led numerous subscription cancellations. By 1931, Bernard Kilgore became news editor for The Wall Street Journal, having joined the Journal copy desk in 1929. He began writing a column for the Pacific Coast Edition called "Dear George", a feature explaining obscure financial topics in simpler, plain rhetoric. "Dear George" sharply contrasted with other Wall Street Journal articles that relied on jargon that was incomprehensible even to its own reporters. The Eastern edition of the Journal began carrying "Dear George", and beginning in 1932, Kilgore wrote "Dear George" three times a week from New York for the Journal. Then in 1934, Kilgore began writing a daily news digest "What's News" for the Journal front page. Kilgore's writings attracted the attention of the White House; President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly recommended Kilgore's work about pension payments for World War I veterans and a Supreme Court decision on the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. However, the Journal continued to struggle financially, with circulation stagnant at 32,000 in 1940. Most editions were only 12 to 14 pages long, and Dow Jones made only $69,000 of profits on $2 million of revenue, mostly due to its news ticker. Scharff observed a lack of coverage about a possible U.S. role in World War II. In the 1940s, Dow Jones took steps to restructure the Journal. Kilgore was named managing editor of the Journal in 1941 and Dow Jones CEO in 1945. Scharff described Kilgore's approach to journalism: "A Journal story had to satisfy its sophisticated readership, but it also had to be clear enough not to discourage neophytes." Additionally, Kilgore aimed to have the newspaper appeal to a national audience, by making the East Coast and West Coast editions of the Journal more homogeneous. Until printing presses and reporting bureaus could be opened on location, photographs could not be included in the Journal. In 1947, the paper won its first Pulitzer Prize for William Henry Grimes's editorials. Also in May 1947, the Journal launched a Southwest edition based in Dallas. The newspaper also added a new slogan in 1949: "Everywhere, Men Who Get Ahead in Business Read The Wall Street Journal." Circulation grew by nearly four-fold, from 32,000 in 1940 to 140,000 in 1949; however, Kilgore's editorial reforms of the Journal had not yet entered popular understanding. The first major journalism award for the Journal was a Sigma Delta Chi public service award, for stories in late 1952 exposing links between Empire Mail Order and organized crime. These stories followed news that Howard Hughes sold RKO Pictures to Empire Mail Order. Circulation of the Journal continued increasing throughout the 1950s, to 205,000 in 1951, 400,000 in 1955, and over 500,000 by 1957. Warren H. Phillips became managing editor of The Wall Street Journal in 1957 after being promoted from Chicago bureau manager. Phillips was Jewish, in contrast to the largely midwestern, WASP management of the Journal at the time. Phillips, a former socialist, shifted his political views in the 1950s to reflect social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. Under Phillips, the Journal provided in-depth coverage of the civil rights movement, on the grounds that it "was something that the average businessman needed to know about". For instance, Journal coverage of the Little Rock Central High School integration crisis went beyond the largely visual, emotional elements on newspapers and television, in depicting local citizens as supportive of integration in contrast to Governor Orval Faubus and other local politicians. During the 1962–1963 New York City newspaper strike, the Journal was the only daily newspaper to continue printing in New York City; however, after the strike, Kilgore ordered the printing presses moved from New York to Chicopee, Massachusetts effective July 1, 1963. Although Kilgore did not publicly explain his rationale then, Scharff wrote in 1986 that the move resulted from feuds between Dow Jones and the printer's union. By Kilgore's death in 1967, Wall Street Journal circulation exceeded one million. In 1967, Dow Jones Newswires began a major expansion outside of the United States ultimately placing its journalists in every major financial center in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and Africa. In 1970, Dow Jones bought the Ottaway newspaper chain, which at the time comprised nine dailies and three Sunday newspapers. Later, the name was changed to Dow Jones Local Media Group. The first strike affecting a Journal printing plant was a three-day strike at Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1967; that would be followed by a weeklong strike by truck drivers at the South Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1970.

The period from 1971 to 1997 brought about a series of launches, acquisitions, and joint ventures, including "Factiva", The Wall Street Journal Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, the WSJ.com website, Dow Jones Indexes, MarketWatch, and "WSJ Weekend Edition". In 2007, News Corp. acquired Dow Jones. WSJ., a luxury lifestyle magazine, was launched in 2008. A complement to the print newspaper, The Wall Street Journal Online, was launched in 1996 and has allowed access only by subscription from the beginning. A weekly (later daily) crossword edited by Mike Shenk was introduced in 1998.

## 2000-2007

In 2003, Dow Jones began to integrate reporting of the Journal's print and online subscribers together in Audit Bureau of Circulations statements. In 2007, it was commonly believed to be the largest paid-subscription news site on the Web, with 980,000 paid subscribers. Since then, digital subscription has risen to 1.3 million as of September 2018, falling to number two behind The New York Times with 3 million digital subscriptions. In May 2008, an annual subscription to the digital edition of The Wall Street Journal cost $119 for those who do not have subscriptions to the print edition. By June 2013, the monthly cost for a subscription to the online edition was $22.99, or $275.88 annually, excluding introductory offers. Digital subscription rates increased dramatically to $443.88 per year as its popularity increased over print, with first-time subscribers paying $187.20 per year. On November 30, 2004, Oasys Mobile and The Wall Street Journal released an app that would allow users to access content from The Wall Street Journal Online via their mobile phones. In September 2005, the Journal launched a weekend edition, delivered to all subscribers, which marked a return to Saturday publication after a lapse of some 50 years. The move was designed in part to attract more consumer advertising. In 2005, the Journal reported a readership profile of about 60 percent top management, an average income of $191,000, an average household net worth of $2.1 million, and an average age of 55. In 2007, the Journal launched a worldwide expansion of its website to include major foreign-language editions. The paper had also shown an interest in buying the rival Financial Times.

## News Corporation and News Corp Acquisition

On May 2, 2007, News Corporation made an unsolicited takeover bid for Dow Jones, offering $60 per share for stock that had been selling for $36.33 per share. The Bancroft family, which controlled more than 60% of the voting stock, at first rejected the offer, but later reconsidered its position. Three months later, on August 1, 2007, News Corporation and Dow Jones entered into a definitive merger agreement. The $5 billion sale added The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's news empire, which already included Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, London's The Times, the New York Post, and the Fox flagship station WNYW (Channel 5) and MyNetworkTV flagship WWOR (Channel 9). On December 13, 2007, shareholders representing more than 60 percent of Dow Jones's voting stock approved the company's acquisition by News Corporation. In an editorial page column, publisher L. Gordon Crovitz said the Bancrofts and News Corporation had agreed that the Journal's news and opinion sections would preserve their editorial independence from their new corporate parent. A special committee was established to oversee the paper's editorial integrity. When the managing editor Marcus Brauchli resigned on April 22, 2008, the committee said that News Corporation had violated its agreement by not notifying the committee earlier. However, Brauchli said he believed that new owners should appoint their own editor. A 2007 Journal article quoted charges that Murdoch had made and broken similar promises in the past. One large shareholder commented that Murdoch has long "expressed his personal, political and business biases through his newspapers and television stations". Former Times assistant editor Fred Emery remembers an incident when "Mr. Murdoch called him into his office in March 1982 and said he was considering firing Times editor Harold Evans. Mr. Emery says he reminded Mr. Murdoch of his promise that editors couldn't be fired without the independent directors' approval. 'God, you don't take all that seriously, do you?' Mr. Murdoch answered, according to Mr. Emery." Murdoch eventually forced out Evans. The Journal, along with its parent Dow Jones & Company, was among the businesses News Corporation spun off in 2013 as the new News Corp.

## Other

In 2011, The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had artificially inflated its European sales numbers, by paying Executive Learning Partnership for purchasing 16% of European sales. These inflated sales numbers then enabled the Journal to charge similarly inflated advertising rates, as the advertisers would think that they reached more readers than they actually did. In addition, the Journal agreed to run "articles" featuring Executive Learning Partnership, presented as news, but effectively advertising. The case came to light after a Belgian Wall Street Journal employee, Gert Van Mol, informed Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton about the questionable practice. As a result, the then Wall Street Journal Europe CEO and Publisher Andrew Langhoff was fired after it was found out he personally pressured journalists into covering one of the newspaper's business partners involved in the issue. Since September 2011, all the online articles that resulted from the ethical wrongdoing carry a Wall Street Journal disclaimer informing the readers about the circumstances in which they were created. In November 2016, in an effort to cut costs, the Journal's editor-in-chief, Gerard Baker, announced layoffs of staff and consolidation of its print sections. The new "Business & Finance" section combined the former "Business & Tech" and "Money & Investing" sections. The new "Life & Arts" section took the place of "Personal Journal" and "Arena". In addition, the Journal's "Greater New York" coverage was reduced and moved to the main section of paper. The section was shuttered on July 9, 2021. A 2018 survey conducted by Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that The Wall Street Journal was considered the third most-accurate and fourth most-unbiased news organization among the general public, tenth among Democrats, and second among Republicans. In an October 2018 Simmons Research survey of 38 news organizations, The Wall Street Journal was ranked the most trusted news organization by Americans. Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University wrote that the paper's "combination of respected news pages and conservative editorial pages seem to be a magic formula for generating trust across the ideological spectrum." From 2019 through 2022, the Journal partnered with Facebook to provide content for the social-media site's "News Tab". Facebook paid the Journal in excess of $10 million during that period, terminating the relationship as part of a broader shift away from news content. On June 13, 2022, the Journal launched a product review website called Buy Side. The website remains free and has a distinct team from the Journal newsroom. In February 2024, the Journal laid off about 20 employees, primarily economics reporters based in Washington, D.C. Moving forward, those beats will be covered by the newspaper's New York-based business team. The next month the paper laid off another five people from its standards and ethics team. In April, the paper laid off at least 11 people from its video and social media desks. In May, the Journal cut six editorial staff positions from its Hong Kong bureau and another two reporter jobs in Singapore as part of a shift in the region from Hong Kong to Singapore. More staff were laid off a few weeks later amid further restructuring, including at least eight reporters.

## Miscellaneous milestones

WSJ Noted., a monthly digital magazine, launches on June 30, 2020, in a bid to attract younger readers. Reaches 3 million subscribers in May 2020 WSJ Live became available on mobile devices in September 2011. WSJ Weekend, the weekend newspaper, expanded September 2010, with two new sections: "Off Duty" and "Review". "Greater New York", a stand-alone, full-color section dedicated to the New York metro area, ran from April 2010 until July 2021. The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco Bay Area Edition, which focuses on local news and events, launched on November 5, 2009, appearing locally each Thursday in the print Journal and every day online at WSJ.com/SF. WSJ Weekend, formerly called Saturday's Weekend Edition: September 2005. Launch of Today's Journal, which included both the addition of Personal Journal and color capacity to the Journal: April 2002. Launch of The Wall Street Journal Sunday: September 12, 1999. A four-page print supplement of original investing news, market reports and personal-finance advice that ran in the business sections of other U.S. newspapers. WSJ Sunday circulation peaked in 2005 with 84 newspapers reaching nearly 11 million homes. The publication ceased on February 7, 2015. Friday Journal, formerly called First Weekend Journal: March 20, 1998. WSJ.com launched in April 1996. First three-section Journal: October 1988. First two-section Journal: June 1980.

## Format and Design changes

The nameplate is unique in having a period at the end. Front-page advertising in the Journal was re-introduced on September 5, 2006. This followed similar introductions in the European and Asian editions in late 2005. After presenting nearly identical front-page layouts for half a century –  always six columns, with the day's top stories in the first and sixth columns, "What's News" digest in the second and third, the "A-hed" feature story in the fourth (with 'hed' being jargon for headline) and themed weekly reports in the fifth column –  the paper in 2007 decreased its broadsheet width from 15 to 12 inches while keeping the length at 223⁄4 inches, to save newsprint costs. News design consultant Mario García collaborated on the changes. Dow Jones said it would save $18 million a year in newsprint costs across all The Wall Street Journal papers. This move eliminated one column of print, pushing the "A-hed" out of its traditional location (though the paper now usually includes a quirky feature story on the right side of the front page, sandwiched among the lead stories). The paper uses ink dot drawings called hedcuts, introduced in 1979 and originally created by Kevin Sprouls, in addition to photographs, a method of illustration considered a consistent visual signature of the paper. the Journal still heavily employs the use of caricatures, including those by illustrator Ken Fallin, such as when Peggy Noonan memorialized then-recently deceased newsman Tim Russert. The use of color photographs and graphics has become increasingly common in recent years with the addition of more "lifestyle" sections. The daily was awarded by the Society for News Design World's Best Designed Newspaper award for 1994 and 1997.

## Format and Features

Since 1980, the Journal has been published in multiple sections. The Journal increased its maximum issue length to 96 pages, including up to 24 color pages, in 2002. As of 2012, The Wall Street Journal had a global news staff of around 2,000 journalists in 85 news bureaus across 51 countries. As of 2012, it had 26 printing plants. Its Asia headquarters is in Hong Kong, but will move to Singapore after it stated it would do so in 2024. Regularly scheduled sections are:

Section One: Every day; corporate news, as well as political and economic reporting and the opinion pages Marketplace: Monday through Friday; coverage of health, technology, media, and marketing industries (the second section was launched June 23, 1980) Money and Investing: Every day; covers and analyzes international financial markets (the third section was launched October 3, 1988) Personal Journal: Published Tuesday through Thursday; covers personal investments, careers and cultural pursuits (the section was introduced April 9, 2002) Off Duty: Published Saturdays in WSJ Weekend; focuses on fashion, food, design, travel and gear/tech. The section was launched September 25, 2010. Review: Published Saturdays in WSJ Weekend; focuses on essays, commentary, reviews and ideas. The section was launched September 25, 2010. Mansion: Published Fridays, focuses on high-end real estate. The section was launched October 5, 2012. WSJ Magazine: Launched in 2008 as a quarterly, this luxury magazine supplement distributed within the U.S., European and Asian editions of The Wall Street Journal grew to 12 issues per year in 2014. In addition, several columnists contribute regular features to the Journal opinion page:

Mondays: Americas by Mary O'Grady Wednesdays: Business World by Holman W. Jenkins Jr. Thursdays: Wonder Land by Daniel Henninger Fridays: Potomac Watch by Kimberley Strassel Weekend Edition: Rule of Law, The Weekend Interview (variety of authors), Declarations by Peggy Noonan In addition to editorials and columns from the printed newspaper, wsj.com carries two daily web-only opinion columns:

Best of the Web Today by James Taranto, the editor of the former OpinionJournal.com website (no subscription required). Political Diary edited by Holman W. Jenkins Jr. and featuring John Fund (separate subscription required). In addition to these regular opinion pieces, on Fridays the Journal publishes a religion-themed op-ed, titled "Houses of Worship", written by a different author each week. Authors range from the Dalai Lama to cardinals.

## Style & Substance

Style & Substance is a monthly bulletin on English language usage. Each issue discusses specific language issues from the perspective of the WSJ's copyeditors according to the newspaper's internal stylebook. The first issue of Style & Substance was published in 1987 under the direction of front page editor Paul R. Martin. Front page editor Bill Power and online editor Jennifer Hicks succeeded him in 2013. The Journal announces major stylistic changes through the bulletin, such as the newspaper's abandonment of courtesy titles in 2023.

## WSJ.

WSJ. is The Wall Street Journal's luxury lifestyle magazine. Its coverage spans art, fashion, entertainment, design, food, architecture, travel and more. Sarah Ball is Editor in Chief and Omblyne Pelier is Publisher. Launched as a quarterly in 2008, the magazine grew to 12 issues a year for 2014. The magazine is inserted into the weekend U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal and is available on WSJ.com and in the newspaper's iPad app. Penélope Cruz, Carmelo Anthony, Woody Allen, Scarlett Johansson, Emilia Clarke, Daft Punk, and Gisele Bündchen have all been featured on the cover. In 2012, the magazine launched its Innovator Awards program. An extension of the November Innovators issue, the awards ceremony, held in New York City at Museum of Modern Art, honors visionaries across the fields of design, fashion, architecture, humanitarianism, art and technology. In 2013, Adweek named WSJ. the "Hottest Lifestyle Magazine of the Year" in its annual Hot List.

## OpinionJournal.com

OpinionJournal.com was a website featuring content from the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. It existed separately from the news content at wsj.com until January 2008, when it was merged into the main website. The editorials (titled "Review & Outlook") reflected The Journal's conservative political editorial line, as did its regular columnists, who included Peggy Noonan, John Fund, and Daniel Henninger.

## Sources

- The Wall Street Journal · Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=173070

Source: Wikipedia contributors — https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=173070&oldid=1382522398

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Adaptation notice: Reformatted for XPay; the source may be abridged, restructured or translated. Consult the cited revision for the original.