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The Wall Street Journal

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Media

                         The Wall Street Journal
       Type     Daily newspaper
      Format    Broadsheet
     __________________________________________________________________

      Owner     Dow Jones & Company
    Publisher   L. Gordon Crovitz
      Editor    Paul E. Steiger
     Founded    July 8, 1889
   Headquarters 200 Liberty Street
                New York, NY 10281
     __________________________________________________________________

   Website: WSJ.com

   The Wall Street Journal is an influential international daily newspaper
   published in New York City, New York with a worldwide average daily
   circulation of more than 2.6 million as of 2005. For many years it had
   the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, although
   it is currently second to USA Today with the Journal having a U.S.
   circulation of 1.8 million in November 2003. The Journal also publishes
   Asian and European editions. Its main rival as a daily financial
   newspaper is the London-based Financial Times, which also publishes
   several international editions. The Wall Street Journal is owned by Dow
   Jones & Company.

   The Journal newspaper primarily covers U.S. and international business
   and financial news and issues—the paper's name comes from Wall Street,
   the street in New York City which is the heart of the financial
   district. It has been printed continuously since its founding on July
   8, 1889 by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. The
   newspaper has won the Pulitzer Prize twenty-nine times, including the
   2003 and 2004 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism.

Foundation to present day

   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.

   A complement to the print newspaper, the Wall Street Journal Online is
   the largest paid subscription news site on the Web — with 712,000 paid
   subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2004. As of November 2006, an
   annual subscription to the online edition of the Wall Street Journal
   cost $99 annually for those who do not have subscriptions to the print
   edition .

   In September 2005, the Journal launched a weekend edition, delivered to
   all subscribers, which marked a return to Saturday publication after a
   lapse of some 30 years. The move was designed in part to attract more
   consumer advertising.

   In 2005 the Journal reported a readership profile of about 60% top
   management, an average income of $191,000, an average household net
   worth of $2.1 million, and an average age of 55.

   In 2006 the paper announced that it would be including advertising on
   its front page for the first time. This follows front page advertising
   on the European and Asian editions in late 2005.

   The paper still uses ink dot drawings called hedcuts, introduced in
   1979 , rather than photographs of people, a practice unique among major
   newspapers. However, the use of colour photographs and graphics has
   become increasingly common in recent years with the addition of more
   "lifestyle" sections.

Future plans

   In January 2007 the Journal plans to decrease its broadsheet width from
   15 to 12 inches while keeping the length at 22 3/4 inches in order to
   save newsprint costs. The shrinking amounts to a full column. The paper
   has said it will keep the six column inside format but is uncertain
   about the effects on the paper's famous front page. Other newspapers
   owned by Dow Jones & Company are also affected. Barron's Magazine, the
   journal's weekly edition, will shrink by three inches from top to
   bottom. The 33 newspapers in the Dow subsidiary Ottaway Community
   Newspapers converted to the new size between 2000 and 2003. Other
   newspapers in the country including the The Washington Post are
   converting to the new standard broadsheet size. The Journal says it
   will save $18 million a year in newsprint costs across all the papers.

Sections

   The Journal features several distinct sections:
     * Section One – features corporate news, as well as political and
       economic reporting
     * Marketplace – includes coverage of health, technology, media, and
       marketing industries (the second section was launched June 23,
       1980)
     * Money and Investing – covers and analyzes international financial
       markets (the third section was launched October 3, 1988)
     * Personal Journal – published Tuesday-Thursday, this section covers
       personal investments, careers and cultural pursuits (the personal
       section was introduced April 9, 2002)
     * Weekend Journal – published Fridays, explores personal interests of
       business readers, including real estate, travel, and sports (the
       section was introduced March 20, 1998)
     * Pursuits – published Saturdays, focusing on business readers'
       leisure-time decisions, including food and cooking, entertainment
       and culture, books, and the home.

   On average, The Journal is about 96 pages long. For the year 2004, the
   inclusion of 45 additional Special Reports is planned.

Editorial line

   The editorial page of the Journal summarizes its philosophy as being in
   favour of free markets and free people. It is typically viewed as
   adhering to American conservatism and economic liberalism. The page
   takes a free-market view of economic issues and an often
   neoconservative view of American foreign policy. The editorial board
   has long argued for a less-restrictive immigration policy. In a July 3,
   1984 editorial, the board wrote: If Washington still wants to 'do
   something' about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional
   amendment: There shall be open borders.' The editorial page commonly
   publishes pieces by U.S. and world leaders in government, politics and
   business.

   The Journal won its first two Pulitzer Prizes for its editorial writing
   in 1947 and 1953. It describes the history of its editorials:


   The Wall Street Journal

      They are united by the mantra "free markets and free people," the
   principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas
     Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's Wealth of
   Nations. So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands
    for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the
    ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy
        against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary
      majorities. If these principles sound unexceptionable in theory,
         applying them to current issues is often unfashionable and
                               controversial.


   The Wall Street Journal

   Its historical position was much the same, and spelled out the
   conservative foundation of its editorial page:


   The Wall Street Journal

    On our editorial page, we make no pretense of walking down the middle
   of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite
       point of view. We believe in the individual, his wisdom and his
   decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether they
   stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an
     overgrowing government. People will say we are conservative or even
     reactionary. We are not much interested in labels but if we were to
     choose one, we would say we are radical. (William H. Grimes, 1951)


   The Wall Street Journal

   The Journal's editorial and news page staffs are completely independent
   from each other. Every Thanksgiving the editorial page has two famous
   articles that have appeared there since 1961. The first is entitled
   "The Desolate Wilderness" and describes what pilgrims saw when they
   arrived in America. The second is entitled "And the Fair Land" and
   describes in romantic terms the "bounty" of America. It was penned by a
   former editor Vermont Royster, whose Christmas article "In Hoc Anno
   Domini," has appeared every December 25 since 1949.

   During the Reagan administration the newspaper's editorial page was
   particularly influential as the leading voice for supply-side
   economics. Under the editorship of Robert Bartley, it expounded at
   length on such economic concepts such as the Laffer curve and how a
   decrease in taxes can in many cases increase overall tax revenue by
   generating more economic activity, many of which have now entered the
   mainstream of economic academia.

   Its views are somewhat similar to those of the British magazine The
   Economist with its emphasis on free markets. However, the Journal does
   have important differences with respect to European business
   newspapers, most particularly with regard to the relative significance
   of, and causes of, the American budget deficit. (The Journal generally
   blames the lack of foreign growth and other related things while most
   business journals in Europe and Asia blame the very low savings rate
   and concordant high borrowing rate in the United States).

   Regarding personal freedoms, the Journal editorial page stops short of
   agreeing with such Economist-backed issues as the illegality of
   Guantanamo Bay's enemy combatants. Regarding the Guantanamo Bay
   prisoner abuse issue, in the Journal editorial pages, there is
   justification of the use of torture against wartime enemies, while the
   Economist has opposed this, in consideration of both PR and of
   individual human rights.

   In the economic argument of exchange rate regimes (one of the most
   divisive issues among economists), the Journal has a tendency to
   support fixed exchange rates over floating exchange rates in spite of
   its support for the free market in other respects. For example, the
   Journal was a major supporter of the Chinese yuan's peg to the dollar,
   and strongly opposed the American politicians who were criticising the
   Chinese government about the peg. It opposed the moves by China to let
   the yuan gradually float, arguing that the fixed rate benefited both
   the U.S. and China.

Recurring Columns

     * Daily - Best of the Web Today by James Taranto
     * Tuesday - Global View by Bret Stephens
     * Wednesday - Business World by Holman W. Jenkins Jr
     * Thursday - Cross Country (variety of authors)
     * Friday - Wonder Land by Daniel Henninger and Americas by Mary
       O'Grady
     * Weekend Edition - Rule of Law (variety of authors)

Notable reporting

   The Journal has had several series of articles which have gone on to
   have significant impact. Many of these have been transformed into
   books.

Insider trading

   In the 1980s, Journal reporter James B. Stewart brought national
   attention to the illegal practice of insider trading, co-winning the
   Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism in 1988, with Daniel Hertzberg
   , now the paper's senior deputy managing editor. Stewart expanded on
   this theme in his book, Den of Thieves.

RJR Nabisco buyout

   In 1987, a bidding war ensued between several financial firms for
   tobacco and food giant RJR Nabisco. This was documented in several
   Journal articles by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. These articles were
   later used as the basis of a bestselling book, Barbarians at the Gate:
   The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and then into a made-for-TV film .

Enron

   In 2001, the Journal was ahead of most of the journalistic pack in
   appreciating the importance of the accounting abuses at Enron, and two
   of its reporters in particular, Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller,
   played a crucial role in bringing these abuses to light.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
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