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Dow Jones group

Overview

This profile considers the Dow Jones group, best known for ownership of the Wall Street Journal.

It covers -

  • introduction
  • the Wall Street Journal
  • development
  • studies

Introduction

The Dow Jones group centres on the Wall Street Journal but encompasses online services, a handful of business journals and minor newspapers under the Ottaway Newspapers umbrella. It has diversified more than the London Financial Times (FT).

Its corporate site is here.

The following page provides an indication of Dow Jones holdings.

Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) boasted an average paid circulation of around 1.8 million in 2002. Throughout its history it has been noted for its upbeat stance on US capitalism, serious coverage of business and more problematical coverage of those who didn't share the faith (eg a somewhat conspiracist approach to Bill Clinton that wasn't matched by critical scrutiny of Reagan or Bush Sr and Jr). Overall it is the US financial sector 'paper of record'.

Development

Dow Jones & Company 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 in 1902; circulation was then around 7,000 but climbed to 50,000 by the end of the 1920s. Barron's National Business & Financial Weekly was launched in 1921.

In the 1970s, Dow Jones acquired the Ottaway group of community newspapers. Earlier moves into consumer publishing had been unsuccessful. Ottaway was subsequently described as serving to "mitigate the impact of sharp but cyclical business-advertising declines" at the WSJ. the shape of Ottaway has changed: the Joplin Globe, Portsmouth Herald, Ashland Daily Independent and Mankato Free Press were for example sold to CNHI for US$182 million in 2002 and a year later Ottaway acquired the Stockton Record from Omaha World-Herald Co for US$144 million.

Dow expanded outside the US, taking a stake in the Far Eastern Economic Review (founded 1946) and establishing The Asian Wall Street Journal in 1976. The Wall Street Journal Europe, published in Brussels,was launched in 1983.

In 1998 it sold its ailing Telerate financial data service to Reuters and Bloomberg competitor Bridge Information Systems.

In 1992 it launched SmartMoney magazine with Hearst. The Wall Street Journal Online was launches as WSJ.com in 1996. In 1997 it established CNBC, a global business television alliance with NBC. In 1999 Dow Jones and Holtzbrinck agreed to swap stakes in The Wall Street Journal Europe and Handelsblatt, Germany's major business newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal Sunday (focused on personal finance and careers) began publication as syndicated content in major US metropolitan Sunday newspapers in 1999. In that year Dow Jones launched Vedomosti (The Record) a business newspaper in Russia.

Studies

The Power & the Money (New York: Birch Lane Press 1993) by Francis X Daly is a warts & all study of the Wall Street Journal. More serious treatment is given in Worldly Power: The Making of the Wall Street Journal (New York: Beaufort 1986) by Edward Scharff.

Jerry Rosenberg's Inside the Wall Street Journal: The History and the Power of Dow Jones & Co. & America's Most Influential Newspaper (New York: Macmillan 1988) is thinner but more entertaining than Lloyd Wendt's The Wall Street Journal: The Story of Dow Jones & the Nation's Business Newspaper (Chicago: Rand McNally 1982), an official history. For the environment see John Steel Gordon's The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street As A World Power (New York: Scribners 1999), Howard Wachtel's Street of Dreams, Boulevard of Broken Hearts: Wall Street's First Century (London: Pluto Press 2003), Doug Henwood's Wall Street (London: Verso 1997) and studies highlighted in the News services pages.

A point of reference for the early years is provided by Douglas Steeples' Advocate for American Enterprise: William Buck Dana and the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 1865-1910 (Westport: Greenwood Press 2002).