The Wall Street Journal facts for kids

"WSJ" redirects here. For other uses, see WSJ (disambiguation).

Quick facts for kids
The Wall Street Journal
Trust Your Decisions

Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	News Corp (via Dow Jones & Company)
Founder(s)	Charles Dow Edward Jones Charles Bergstresser
Publisher	Almar Latour
Founded	July 8, 1889; 135 years ago (1889-07-08)
Language	English
Headquarters	1211 Avenue of the Americas New York City, New York 10036, U.S.
Country	United States
Circulation	3,966,000 news subscribers 3,406,000 digital-only 560,000 print + digital (as of June 2023)
ISSN	0099-9660 (print) 1042-9840 (web)
OCLC number	781541372

The Wall Street Journal (often called WSJ or just the Journal) is a famous American newspaper. It focuses on business and money news from around the world. It is based in New York City. The Journal is printed six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, which is part of News Corp. You can read it as a large printed newspaper (called a broadsheet) or online.

The Journal has been printed since July 8, 1889. It is known as a very important newspaper, especially for business and financial news. It has won many awards, including 39 Pulitzer Prizes, which are top awards for journalism. The most recent one was in 2023.

The Wall Street Journal is the second-largest newspaper in the United States by how many people read it. In 2023, about 560,000 people got the printed paper, and 3 million people read it online. The Journal also publishes a magazine called WSJ, which covers luxury news and lifestyle topics. It started as a magazine that came out four times a year, but by 2014, it came out 12 times a year. The online version of the Journal started in 1995 and has always required a subscription to read. The newspaper's opinion pages usually share center-right views. However, the news reporting itself aims to be fair and objective. The Journal also makes podcasts, including The Journal, which it creates with Spotify.

History of the Journal

How it Started (1800s)

The very first front page of The Wall Street Journal on July 8, 1889

The company that publishes the Journal, Dow Jones & Company, first made short news updates. These were called flimsies and were delivered by hand to traders at the stock exchange in the early 1880s. Later, these updates were put together into a daily printed summary called the Customers' Afternoon Letter.

Three reporters, Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser, turned this summary into The Wall Street Journal. The first issue was printed on July 8, 1889. Around the same time, they started sending news through telegraph.

In 1896, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was created. This was the first of many ways to track the prices of stocks and bonds on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1899, the Journal started its "Review & Outlook" column, which is still published today. Charles Dow wrote it first.

Growing in the 1900s

Vladimir Putin with Wall Street Journal reporter Karen Elliott House in 2002

In 1902, a journalist named Clarence Barron bought control of the company. Back then, about 7,000 copies were printed. By the late 1920s, this number grew to 50,000. Barron and the people before him were known for making business news reporting brave and independent. This was new for business journalism at the time. In 1921, Barron's, a top financial weekly newspaper in the U.S., was started. Barron passed away in 1928. His family, the Bancroft family, continued to own the company until 2007.

The Journal became very important in the 1940s. This was a time when industries and financial businesses in New York were growing a lot in the United States. Bernard Kilgore became the managing editor in 1941 and the company's CEO in 1945. He worked for the Journal for 25 years. Kilgore designed the paper's famous front page, with its "What's News" summary. He also created a plan to deliver the paper all over the country. Because of him, the paper's circulation grew from 33,000 in 1941 to 1.1 million when he died in 1967. In 1947, under Kilgore, the paper won its first Pulitzer Prize for editorials written by William Henry Grimes.

In 1967, Dow Jones Newswires started to grow outside the U.S. They sent journalists to major financial cities in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and Africa. In 1970, Dow Jones bought the Ottaway newspaper chain, which had nine daily and three Sunday newspapers. This chain was later renamed Dow Jones Local Media Group.

From 1971 to 1997, the Journal launched new products, bought other companies, and worked with partners. These included "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. bought Dow Jones. The luxury lifestyle magazine WSJ. was launched in 2008.

The Wall Street Journal Online started in 1996. From the very beginning, you needed a subscription to access it. In 1998, a weekly (later daily) crossword puzzle, edited by Mike Shenk, was added.

The 2000s and Today

In 2003, Dow Jones started counting print and online subscribers together for their reports. In 2007, it was thought to be the biggest paid-subscription news website, with 980,000 paid subscribers. By September 2018, digital subscriptions grew to 1.3 million.

In November 2004, The Wall Street Journal and Oasys Mobile launched an app. This allowed people to read content from The Wall Street Journal Online on their mobile phones.

In September 2005, the Journal started a weekend edition, delivered to all subscribers. This was the first time it had been published on a Saturday in about 50 years. This change was partly to attract more advertisers.

In 2005, a survey showed that about 60 percent of the Journal readers were in top management jobs. Their average income was $191,000, and their average household savings were $2.1 million. The average age of readers was 55.

In 2007, the Journal expanded its website globally to include versions in major foreign languages.

Changes in Design

The Journal has a unique nameplate because it has a period at the end.

Front-page advertising was brought back to the Journal on September 5, 2006. This had already happened in the European and Asian versions in late 2005.

For 50 years, the paper's front page looked almost the same. It always had six columns, with top stories in the first and sixth columns, a "What's News" summary in the second and third, a special feature story (called an "A-hed") in the fourth, and weekly reports in the fifth column. In 2007, the paper made its broadsheet narrower, from 15 to 12 inches, to save money on paper. News design expert Mario Garcia helped with these changes. Dow Jones said this would save $18 million a year across all The Wall Street Journal papers. This change removed one column of print.

The paper uses special ink dot drawings called hedcuts, which started in 1979. These drawings, first made by Kevin Sprouls, are a unique visual style of the paper. The Journal still uses many caricatures, including those by illustrator Ken Fallin. In recent years, more color photographs and graphics have been used, especially in new "lifestyle" sections.

The Society for News Design awarded the daily paper the World's Best Designed Newspaper award in 1994 and 1997.

News Corp Ownership

On May 2, 2007, News Corporation offered to buy Dow Jones & Company for $60 a share. The Bancroft family, who owned most of the voting shares, first said no. But they later changed their minds.

Three months later, on August 1, 2007, News Corporation and Dow Jones agreed to the sale. The $5 billion deal added The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's news businesses. He already owned Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, London's The Times, the New York Post, and other TV stations.

On December 13, 2007, shareholders who owned more than 60 percent of Dow Jones's voting shares approved the sale to News Corporation.

The publisher, L. Gordon Crovitz, said that the Bancroft family and News Corporation agreed that the Journal's news and opinion sections would stay independent from their new owner.

A special committee was set up to make sure the paper's news was fair and independent. When the managing editor Marcus Brauchli left on April 22, 2008, the committee said News Corporation had broken its agreement by not telling them sooner. However, Brauchli said he thought new owners should choose their own editor.

In 2013, the Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones & Company, became part of the new News Corp when News Corporation split into two companies.

In November 2016, to save money, the Journal's editor-in-chief, Gerard Baker, announced that some staff would be laid off and print sections would be combined. The new "Business & Finance" section combined the old "Business & Tech" and "Money & Investing" sections. The new "Life & Arts" section replaced "Personal Journal" and "Arena". Also, the Journal's "Greater New York" coverage was reduced and moved to the main section of the paper. This section was closed on July 9, 2021.

In an October 2018 survey, The Wall Street Journal was ranked the most trusted news organization by Americans. Joshua Benton from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University wrote that the paper's "mix of respected news pages and conservative opinion pages seems to be a great way to build trust across different political views."

The "Personal Journal" section name was brought back in July 2020.

In February 2024, the Journal laid off about 20 employees, mostly reporters who covered economics in Washington, D.C.. These topics will now be covered by the newspaper's business team in New York. The next month, the paper laid off five more people from its standards and ethics team. In April, at least 11 people from its video and social media teams were laid off. In May, the Journal cut six editorial staff jobs in its Hong Kong office and two reporter jobs in Singapore. The paper will now focus more on Singapore, creating several new jobs there.

Recent Important Moments

WSJ Noted., a monthly digital magazine, started on June 30, 2020. It aims to attract younger readers.
The Journal reached 3 million subscribers in May 2020.
WSJ Live became available on mobile devices in September 2011.
WSJ Weekend, the weekend newspaper, grew in September 2010 with two new sections: "Off Duty" and "Review".
"Greater New York", a separate, full-color section about 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, started on November 5, 2009. It appeared locally every Thursday in print and every day online at WSJ.com/SF.
WSJ Weekend, formerly called Saturday's Weekend Edition, started in September 2005.
The launch of Today's Journal, which included the new Personal Journal section and color printing for the Journal, was in April 2002.
The launch of The Wall Street Journal Sunday was on September 12, 1999. This was a four-page print addition with original investing news, market reports, and personal finance advice. It was included in the business sections of other U.S. newspapers. WSJ Sunday was read by nearly 11 million homes in 84 newspapers in 2005. It stopped being published on February 7, 2015.
Friday Journal, formerly called First Weekend Journal, started on March 20, 1998.
WSJ.com launched in April 1996.
The first three-section Journal was in October 1988.
The first two-section Journal was in June 1980.

What's Inside and How it Works

Since 1980, the Journal has been published in several sections. At one point, the Journal had as many as 96 pages in one issue. But because advertising has decreased across the industry, the Journal usually prints about 50 to 60 pages per issue now.

As of 2012, The Wall Street Journal had about 2,000 journalists working in 85 news offices in 51 countries. It also had 26 printing plants. Its main office in Asia is in Hong Kong, but it will move to Singapore in 2024.

Here are the regular sections you can find:

Section One: Published every day. It covers company news, as well as political and economic reports, and the opinion pages.
Marketplace: Published Monday through Friday. It covers health, technology, media, and marketing industries. This second section started on June 23, 1980.
Money and Investing: Published every day. It covers and analyzes international financial markets. This third section started on October 3, 1988.
Personal Journal: Published Tuesday through Thursday. It covers personal investments, careers, and cultural activities. This section was introduced on April 9, 2002.
Off Duty: Published Saturdays in WSJ Weekend. It focuses on fashion, food, design, travel, and gadgets. This section started on September 25, 2010.
Review: Published Saturdays in WSJ Weekend. It features essays, comments, reviews, and ideas. This section started on September 25, 2010.
Mansion: Published Fridays. It focuses on expensive real estate. This section started on October 5, 2012.
WSJ Magazine: Started in 2008 as a magazine that came out four times a year. This luxury magazine is included with the U.S., European, and Asian editions of The Wall Street Journal. By 2014, it grew to 12 issues per year.

Several writers also contribute regular columns to the Journal's 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 (by various authors), Declarations by Peggy Noonan

Besides the editorials and columns from the printed newspaper, wsj.com has two daily online-only opinion columns:

Best of the Web Today by James Taranto, who was the editor of the former OpinionJournal.com website (no subscription needed).
Political Diary edited by Holman W. Jenkins Jr. and featuring John Fund (requires a separate subscription).

Also, on Fridays, the Journal publishes a religion-themed opinion piece called "Houses of Worship". It is written by a different author each week, from leaders like the Dalai Lama to cardinals.

About WSJ. Magazine

WSJ. is The Wall Street Journal's magazine about luxury lifestyles. It covers topics like art, fashion, entertainment, design, food, architecture, and travel. Sarah Ball is the Editor in Chief, and Omblyne Pelier is the Publisher.

The magazine started in 2008 and came out four times a year. By 2014, it grew to 12 issues a year. The magazine is included with the weekend U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal. You can also read it on WSJ.com and in the newspaper's iPad app.

Famous people like Penélope Cruz, Carmelo Anthony, Woody Allen, Scarlett Johansson, Emilia Clarke, Daft Punk, and Gisele Bündchen have been featured on its cover.

In 2012, the magazine started its Innovator Awards program. This awards ceremony, held in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art, honors creative people in design, fashion, architecture, helping others, art, and technology.

In 2013, Adweek magazine named WSJ. the "Hottest Lifestyle Magazine of the Year."

About OpinionJournal.com

OpinionJournal.com
Type of site	News and opinion
Available in	English
Owner	The Wall Street Journal
Created by	The Wall Street Journal
Revenue	N/A
Commercial	Yes
Registration	N/A
Current status	Redirects to

OpinionJournal.com was a website that shared content from the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. It was separate from the news content on wsj.com until January 2008, when it was combined into the main website. The opinion pieces (called "Review & Outlook") showed the Journal's conservative political views. Its regular writers included Peggy Noonan, John Fund, and Daniel Henninger.

About WSJ Noted.

On June 30, 2020, the Journal launched WSJ Noted.. This is a monthly digital "news and culture" magazine for subscribers aged 18–34. It was created to attract a younger audience to the Journal. The magazine has a group of about 7,000 young adults who get to see content early, give feedback, and join question-and-answer sessions with the Noted staff.

Editorial Board and Views

The people on The Wall Street Journal editorial board manage the Journal's opinion page. They decide the style and direction of the newspaper's opinion section. The Journal does not give many details about what board members do.

Every Saturday and Sunday, three opinion page writers and host Paul Gigot, who is the editor of the opinion page, appear on Fox News Channel's Journal Editorial Report. They talk about current events with different guests. As editors of the opinion page, Vermont C. Royster (from 1958–1971) and Robert Bartley (from 1972–2000) shared a conservative view of the news every day.

People have noticed differences between the Journal's news reporting and its opinion pages. One reporter wrote in 1982, "While Journal reporters are busy informing readers, Journal opinion writers often share views that go against the paper's best reporting and news analysis." A reference book in 2011 described the opinion pages as "very conservative" but noted that the news coverage "has had a great reputation among readers of all political views."

In July 2020, more than 280 Journal journalists and Dow Jones staff wrote a letter to the new publisher, Almar Latour. They criticized the opinion pages for "not checking facts and being unclear, and for seeming to ignore evidence." They added that "opinion articles often make claims that are proven wrong by WSJ reporting." The editorial board replied that its opinion pages "won't give in to pressure" and that the goal of the opinion content is to be separate from the Journal's news content. They also said they want to offer different views from "the common progressive views that are in almost all media today." The board's answer did not talk about the fact-checking issues raised in the letter.

Political Views

The Journal's opinion pages and columns, which are run separately from the news pages, have a conservative leaning. They are very important in conservative groups. Even so, the Journal does not officially support political candidates and has not done so since 1928.

The editorial board has long supported a business-friendly immigration policy.

The Journal's opinion page was seen as critical of many parts of Barack Obama's time as president. In particular, it strongly criticized the Affordable Care Act law passed in 2010. It published many opinion pieces attacking different parts of the bill. The Journal's opinion page also criticized the Obama administration's energy policies and foreign policy.

On October 25, 2017, the editorial board asked for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to step down from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. They also accused Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign of working with Russia. In December 2017, the editorial board repeated its calls for Mueller's resignation. These opinion pieces caused disagreements within The Wall Street Journal, as reporters said the opinions hurt the paper's trustworthiness.

In October 2021, the Journal published a letter from former President Donald Trump in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the opinion pages. Other news sources said the letter contained false claims about the 2020 presidential election. The next day, the editorial board published its own criticism of Trump's letter.

Scientific Views

The Journal opinion pages were described as a "place for climate change denial" in 2011. This was because of columns that attacked climate scientists and accused them of cheating. A 2011 study found that the Journal was unique among major American print news media. Mainly in its opinion pages, it presented a false balance that made the uncertainty in climate science seem bigger than it was, or completely denied that humans cause climate change. That year, the Associated Press described the Journal's opinion pages as "a place friendly to climate change skeptics." In 2013, the editorial board and other opinion writers strongly criticized President Obama's plan to deal with climate change, mostly without mentioning climate science. A 2015 study found The Wall Street Journal was the newspaper least likely to show negative effects of global warming among several newspapers. It was also most likely to present climate change solutions as having negative economic impacts, often arguing that the cost of such policies was greater than their benefits.

Climate Feedback, a website that checks facts on media coverage of climate science, found that many opinion articles had "low" to "very low" scientific accuracy. The Partnership for Responsible Growth said in 2016 that only 14% of the guest opinion pieces on climate change presented the findings of "mainstream climate science," while most did not. The Partnership also found that none of the 201 opinion pieces about climate change published in The Wall Street Journal since 1997 admitted that burning fossil fuels is the main cause of climate change.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Journal published many columns that opposed and gave wrong information about the dangers of second-hand smoke, acid rain, and ozone depletion. They also opposed public efforts to control pesticides and asbestos. The Journal later admitted that efforts to reduce acid rain through a system called cap-and-trade had been successful, ten years after the Clean Air Act Amendments.

News Reporting Style

The Journal's news reporting has been called "small-c conservatism". Some former Journal reporters say the paper has become more conservative since Rupert Murdoch bought it.

Fairness in News Pages

Before Murdoch Owned It

The Journal's editors emphasize that their reporters are independent and fair. According to CNN in 2007, the Journal's "newsroom staff is known for reporting without taking sides." Ben Smith of the New York Times described the Journal's news reporting as "small-c [conservative]". He also noted that its readers tend to be more conservative than readers of other major newspapers.

In a 2004 study, Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo argued that the Journal's news pages had a pro-liberal bias. They said this was because the paper more often quoted liberal think tanks. They measured the political leaning of news reports in 20 media outlets. They did this by counting how often the outlets quoted certain think tanks and comparing that to how often politicians quoted the same think tanks. They found that the Journal's news reporting was the most liberal (more liberal than NPR or The New York Times). This study did not include the opinion pieces. Mark Liberman criticized the method used in the study. He argued that the method affected liberals and conservatives differently and that "the model starts with a very strange idea about how political opinion relates to choosing sources to quote." The authors assumed that "think tank ideology ... only matters to liberals."

The plan for News Corp to buy the company in 2007 led to a lot of discussion in the media. People wondered if the news pages would become more conservative under Rupert Murdoch. An opinion piece on August 1, 2007, replied to these questions. It stated that Murdoch planned to "keep the values and honesty of the Journal."

During the Trump Presidency

In 2016 and 2017, the Journal's leadership under Baker was criticized. Critics, both outside and inside the newsroom, felt the paper's coverage of President Donald Trump was too cautious. One very debated issue was the Journal's front-page headline in November 2016. It repeated Trump's false claim that "millions of people" had voted illegally in the election. The paper only noted that the statement was "without proof."

Another debated issue was a note from Baker to Journal editors in January 2017. He told them to avoid using the phrase "seven majority-Muslim countries" when writing about Trump's executive order on travel and immigration. Baker later sent another note "explaining that there was 'no ban'" on the phrase. But he said the paper should "always be careful that this term is not offered as the only description of the countries covered under the ban."

At a meeting with Journal staff in February 2017, Baker defended the paper's coverage. He said it was objective and protected the paper from being "pulled into politics" by arguing with the Trump administration.

A 2018 survey by Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that The Wall Street Journal was considered the third most accurate and fourth most unbiased news organization by the general public. It was ranked tenth among Democrats and second among Republicans.

On February 19, 2020, China announced it was taking away the press passes of three Wall Street Journal reporters in Beijing. China accused the paper of not apologizing for articles that criticized China's efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. They also said the paper failed to investigate and punish those responsible.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed, journalists at the Journal sent a letter to editor-in-chief Matt Murray. They asked for changes in how the paper covers race, policing, and money. The reporters said they "often face resistance when trying to include the stories and voices of workers, residents, or customers." They noted that some editors were more doubtful of these sources' trustworthiness compared to business leaders, government officials, or other groups.

Important Stories Covered

The Journal has won 38 Pulitzer Prizes in its history. Journalists who led some of the newspaper's most famous reporting teams later wrote books that summarized and expanded on their stories.

9/11 Attacks (2001)

The Journal says it sent the first news report, on the Dow Jones wire, about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Its main office, at One World Financial Center, was badly damaged when the World Trade Center towers collapsed right across the street. Top editors worried they might miss publishing an issue for the first time in the paper's 112-year history. They moved to a temporary office at an editor's home. Most of the staff went to Dow Jones's South Brunswick Township, New Jersey, campus. The paper had set up emergency editorial facilities there after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The paper was on newsstands the next day, though it was smaller. Perhaps the most powerful story that day was a first-hand account of the Twin Towers' collapse. It was written by then-Foreign Editor John Bussey. He stayed in a ninth-floor Journal office, very close to the towers. From there, he called in live reports to CNBC as the towers burned. He barely escaped serious injury when the first tower fell. All the windows in the Journal's offices shattered, filling them with dust and debris. The Journal won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for its stories that day.

The Journal later did a worldwide investigation into the causes and meaning of 9/11. They used contacts they had made while covering business in the Arab world. In Kabul, Afghanistan, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal bought two stolen computers. Al Qaeda leaders had used these to plan attacks and daily activities. The secret files were decoded and translated. During this coverage, terrorists kidnapped and killed Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Images for kids

Front page of the first issue of The Wall Street Journal on July 8, 1889
Vladimir Putin with Wall Street Journal correspondent Karen Elliott House in 2002
Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, being interviewed by The Journal in 2011