Wall Street Journal, The, is a major American business and financial newspaper, and one of the most respected newspapers in the world. The paper is published Monday through Saturday. It has one of the largest circulations of any newspaper in the United States.
Dow Jones & Company publishes The Wall Street Journal. The American entrepreneurs (business organizers) Charles H. Dow, Edward D. Jones, and Charles Bergstresser founded the company in 1882. Their first printed publication, a newsletter called the Customers’ Afternoon Letter, began in 1883. The Letter summarized the day’s business and financial news. In 1896, Dow, Jones, and Bergstresser introduced the first index of stock market activity, called the Dow Jones Average, to help readers understand trends on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1889, Dow Jones & Company expanded its newsletter into a newspaper and renamed it The Wall Street Journal.
Today, The Wall Street Journal reports a wide range of business and financial news and information, including stock and mutual fund quotations. The Journal also publishes a variety of articles on national and international news, health, the arts, politics, and technology.
In addition to the U.S. edition, Dow Jones & Company publishes two global editions of the Journal—The Wall Street Journal Asia and The Wall Street Journal Europe. In 1994, the company introduced The Wall Street Journal Special Editions, which consist of Journal pages published internationally in local languages. The Special Editions appear in major newspapers in more than 30 countries. The Wall Street Journal Sunday, which consists of pages of Journal news, appears in the Sunday editions of leading U.S. metropolitan newspapers. The Wall Street Journal Online is one of the largest paid subscription news sites on the Internet. In September 2005, Dow Jones & Company began publishing a weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal on Saturdays. In 2007, the Bancroft family, which had controlled Dow Jones & Company for more than a century, sold Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal to the Australian-born media baron Rupert Murdoch.
