Wall Street Journal
As of 2007, It has a worldwide daily circulation of more than 2 million, with approximately 931,000 paying online subscribers. It was the largest-circulation newspaper in the United States until November 2003, when it was surpassed by USA Today. Its main rival is the London-based Financial Times, which also publishes several international editions.
The Journal newspaper primarily covers U.S.
and international business and financial news and issues—the paper's name comes from Wall Street, the street in New York City that is the heart of the financial district. It has been printed continuously since being founded July 8, 1889, by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser.
The newspaper has won the Pulitzer Prize thirty-three times, including 2007 prizes for backdated stock options and for the adverse impact of China's booming economy.
The future of the Journal has been widely speculated on since the acquisition of Dow Jones by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The announcement that managing editor Marcus Brauchli, a 20-year veteran of the newspaper and a former foreign correspondent, would step down reinvigorated speculation that Murdoch would make deeper changes in the newspaper.
as a consultant, his departure from the top editorial job he held for barely a year (when he took over from the long-serving Paul Steiger) stoked rumors about Murdoch's plans.
History
Beginnings
Dow Jones & Company, publisher of the Journal, was founded in 1882 by reporters Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Jones converted the small Customers' Afternoon Letter into The Wall Street Journal, first published in 1889, and began delivery of the Dow Jones News Service via telegraph.
The Journal featured the Jones 'Average', the first of several indexes of stock and bond prices on the New York Stock Exchange.
Journalist Clarence Barron purchased control of the company for US$130,000 in 1902; circulation was then around 7,000 but climbed to 50,000 by the end of the 1920s. Barron and his predecessors were credited with creating an atmosphere of fearless, independent financial reporting -- a novelty in the early days of business journalism.
Barron died in 1928, a year before Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression in the United States.
Barron's descendants, the Bancroft family, would continue to control the company until 2007.
Later on, the Woodworths published the paper. The Woodworths resided at New York's Sherry-Netherland, sharing the penthouse floor with Cole Porter.
The Journal took its modern shape and prominence in the 1940s, a time of industrial expansion for the United States and its financial institutions in New York.
Bernard Kilgore was named managing editor of the paper in 1941, and company CEO in 1945, eventually compiling a 25-year career as the head of the Journal. Kilgore was the architect of the paper's iconic front-page design, with its "What's News" digest, and its national distribution strategy, which brought the paper's circulation from 33,000 in 1941 to 1.1 million at the time of Kilgore's death in 1967.
Dow Jones was already being pinched financially by a write-off of its failed Telerate electronic news service when it was hit hard by the fall-off in advertising revenue that followed the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000. The kidnapping and murder of reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002 seemed to put a fine point on the Journal's declining fortunes.
By 2005 Journal staffers had endured a long period of tragedy and austerity during which many were laid off and most suffered severe benefit cuts, even as management continued receiving bonuses and pay raises.
Critics and shareholders noted the disconnect between management's behavior and the corporate-governance values preached by the Journal's editorial page. (The top two officers in Dow Jones, CEO Peter Kann and Journal Publisher Karen House, were a married couple, which many regarded as a violation of the arm's-length relationship that public-company officers should maintain with each other.)
By the time Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch made an offer for Dow Jones in May 2007, many of the Journal's best reporters and editors had left in disgust.
Murdoch's bid -- at $60 a share about 80% higher than the prevailing market price -- struck some as excessive. In fact, said others, Murdoch knew a bargain when he saw one: The Journal's journalistic reputation, as well as that of Barron's and other Dow Jones operations, was as strong as ever.
Had the stock gained a compounded 10% annually since 1985 -- a modest rate of appreciation by historical market standards -- it would have traded at around $160 at the time of Murdoch's bid. Many saw the stock's dismal performance, and the paper's ultimate fate, as a damning verdict on the Kann-House regime, which had reigned for 15 years before being ousted in early 2006 (with a collective $14 million severance package).
Murdoch's acquisition prompted further staff departures, most prominently of star financial reporter Henny Sender, who defected to the Financial Times despite a personal appeal from Murdoch reportedly made via phone from his Mediterranean yacht.
In 2003, Dow Jones began to integrate reporting of the Journal's print and online subscribers together in Audit Bureau of Circulations statements. It is commonly held to be the largest paid-subscription news site on the Web, with 980,000 paid subscribers in mid-2007. As of May 2008, an annual subscription to the online edition of the Wall Street Journal cost $119 for those who do not have subscriptions to the print edition.
On November 30th of 2004 Oasys Mobile and the Wall Street Journal released an application that would allow users to access content from the Wall Street Journal Online via their mobile phone. It "will provide up-to-the-minute business and financial news from the Online Journal, along with comprehensive market, stock and commodities data, plus personalized portfolio information--directly to a cell phone."
The paper's paid content is available free, on a limited basis, to America Online subscribers, and through the free Congoo Netpass.
Pulitzer-prize winning stories from 1995 are available free on the Pulitzer web site.
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.
Dow Jones said it would save US$18 million a year in newsprint costs across all the Wall Street Journal papers. This move resulted in the loss of one column of print, pushing the "A-hed" out of its traditional location (although the paper now usually includes a quirky feature story on the right side of the front page, sandwiched among the lead stories).
The paper still uses ink dot drawings called hedcuts, introduced in 1979,, rather than photographs of people, a practice unique among major newspapers. purchase
As of December 13, 2007, the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
On May 2, 2007, News Corp.
made an unsolicited takeover bid for Dow Jones, offering US$60 a share for stock that had been selling for US$33 a share. The Bancroft family, which controls more than 60% of the voting power, at first rejected the offer, but later reconsidered its position.
Three months later, on August 1, 2007, News Corp.
HarperCollins canceled a book by Chris Patten, Britain's last governor of Hong Kong, to accommodate the Chinese government. The Times killed stories that were critical of China.
Features
Since 1980, the Journal has published in several sections.
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)
Weekend Journal – published Fridays; explores personal interests of business readers, including real estate, travel, and sports (the section was introduced March 20, 1998)
Pursuits – formerly published Saturdays; section was originally introduced September 17, 2005 with the debut of the paper's Weekend Edition; focused on readers' lifestyle and leisure, including food and drink, restaurant and cooking trends, entertainment and culture, books, fashion, shopping, travel, sports, recreation, and the home. Jenkins Jr
Thursday - Wonder Land by Daniel Henninger
Friday - Potomac Watch by Kimberley Strassel, Declarations by Peggy Noonan
Weekend Edition - Rule of Law and The Weekend Interview (variety of authors)
Opinions
Editorial page
Further information: Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
The editorial page of the Journal summarizes its philosophy as being in favor of "free markets and free people".
It is typically viewed as adhering to American conservatism and economic liberalism. The page takes a free-market view of economic issues and an often conservative view of American foreign policy.
Since the 1990s, the editorial page of the Journal has been criticised repeatedly for inaccuracy and dishonesty, including a summary in 1995 by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and in 1996 by the Columbia Journalism Review.
The Journal won its first two Pulitzer Prizes for its editorial writing, in 1947 and 1953. Royster, whose Christmas article "In Hoc Anno Domini", has appeared every December 25 since 1949.
Economic issues
During the Reagan administration, the newspaper's editorial page was particularly influential as the leading voice for supply-side economics.
For example, the Journal was a major supporter of the Chinese yuan's peg to the dollar, and strongly disagreed with American politicians who were criticising the Chinese government about the peg. It opposed the moves by China to let the yuan gradually float, arguing that the fixed rate benefited both the United States and China.
Its views are somewhat similar to those of the British magazine The Economist with its emphasis on free markets.
(The Journal generally blames the lack of foreign growth and other related things, while most business journals in Europe and Asia blame the very low savings rate and concordant high borrowing rate in the United States).
Political issues
The editorial board has long argued for a less restrictive immigration policy. In a July 3, 1984 editorial, the board wrote: If Washington still wants to 'do something' about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders.' This stand on immigration reform has placed the Journal as an opponent of most conservative activists and politicians, for example National Review, who favor heightened restrictions on immigration. The editorial page commonly publishes pieces by U.S.
Bush administration with those Lyndon LaRouche, a fringe conspiracy theorist and perennial presidential candidate.
The editorial page routinely publishes articles by scientists skeptical of the theory of global warming, including several influential essays by Richard Lindzen of MIT.
News and opinion
Despite the Journal's reputation as a conservative newspaper, the paper's editors stress the independence and impartiality of their reporters and at least one study of media bias has found the paper's news bias is left-leaning, if anything. It would be nice if there were a less politically fraught body of data on which such modeling exercises could be explored."
The company's planned and eventual acquisition by News Corp.
An August 1 editorial responded to the questions by asserting that Murdoch intended to "maintain the values and integrity of the Journal."
Notable reporting
The Journal has had several series of articles which have gone on to have significant impact. Stewart expanded on this theme in his book, Den of Thieves.
1997: AIDS treatment
David Sanford, a Page One features editor who was infected with HIV in 1982 in a bathhouse from "a man whose name I didn't catch," wrote a front-page personal account of how, with the assistance of improved treatments for HIV, he went from planning his death to planning his retirement. He and other reporters wrote about the new treatments, political and economic issues, and won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting about AIDS.
2000: Enron
Jonathan Weil, a reporter at the Dallas bureau of The Wall Street Journal, is credited with first breaking the story of financial abuses at Enron in July 2000, although Weil himself disavows credit.
The paper was on the stands the next day, albeit in scaled-down form. In Kabul, Afghanistan, a Wall Street Journal reporter bought a pair of looted computers which had been used by leaders of Al Qaeda to plan assassinations, chemical and biological attacks, and mundane daily activities.