Wall Street

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Lore & Background

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 and 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 outer 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 the Dow Jones Industrial Average, while the Dow Jones Railroad Average had been introduced earlier, in 1884. Charles Dow wrote an early 'Review and Outlook' column on April 21, 1899, though the date is not widely confirmed, and the principles later know

In Their Own Story

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

Reader's Guide

The Wall Street Journal is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp. It operates on a subscription model that requires readers to pay for access to most articles and other content. The newspaper is based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. As of 2025, it has about 412,000 print subscribers and more than four million digital subscribers, making it the largest newspaper in the United States by print circulation and the second-most in digital subscribers after The New York Times. The Journal is one of the United States' newspapers of record. Its editorial page is typically center-right in its positions, while its news reporting is more centrist. The newspaper has won 39 Pulitzer Prizes.

Did You Know?

• The first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published on July 8, 1889, and cost $0.02 per copy.
• Charles Dow wrote the first 'Review and Outlook' column on April 21, 1899, which later became known as the Dow theory.
• In 1896, the Journal began publishing the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Dow Jones Railroad Average.
• The Journal won its first Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for editorials by William Henry Grimes.
• During the 1962–1963 New York City newspaper strike, the Journal was the only daily newspaper to continue publishing.