Any time your see that well dressed business person with a newspaper tucked under her arm, chances are the newspaper is The Wall Street Journal.

The Beginning

In 1882 Charles Dow, Edward D. Jones, and Charles Bergstresser formed Dow Jones & Company. Bergstresser's name was left off, apparently because it was quite a mouthful and just didn't sound good with the simple Dow Jones name. He was, however, a very active partner. The company published the first edition of The Wall Street Journal in 1895 and it has been in continuous publication ever since. In 1901 the company was bought by Clarence Walker Barrow, who began to publish stories that explained the facts behind the dry statistics and formal statements and which could be understood by a non expert.

Today

The Wall Street Journal is second To USA in country wide circulation. It sells 1.8 million copies in the United States and has a world circulation of 2.6 million. It is still owned by Dow Jones & Co. The Financial Times, a London based paper, is its main competitor. It publishes Asian and European Editions as well as several regional editions in the United States. The Wall Street Journal On Line, with 712,000 paid subscribers, is the largest paid news subscription site on the Internet. The newspaper’s readership is 60% top management with an average income of 191,000 per year and an average family net worth of 2.1 million. It has won 29 Pulitzer Prizes.

What does the Wall Street Journal publish?

Although it some tines publishes articles with a sociological or other bent, its bread and butter is coverage of the U.S. and world financial and business news. It also publishes editorials and opinion pieces. The editorial and news staffs are completely separate and the editorial staff is conservative whereas the news staff is liberal although this bias it is kept out of its reportage.