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—— ON THIS DAY ——
JULY 8, 1889
New York City, USA
136 years ago
The Wall Street Journal — first published on July 8, 1889, by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser, growing from a financial bulletin into one of the world's most influential newspapers.
The Wall Street Journal published its first issue on July 8, 1889. It grew out of a financial news service run by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser, who had been distributing handwritten news bulletins — 'flimsies' — to subscribers in the financial district of New York. The first Journal was a modest four-page afternoon paper summarizing the day's financial news. Its founders could not have imagined that it would become one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the world.
Charles Dow, the paper's first editor, is the more enduring name of the three founders. In 1896, he created the Dow Jones Industrial Average — an index of twelve major industrial stocks designed to give a single, simple measure of overall stock market performance. The DJIA, expanded to thirty stocks, remains the most widely cited stock market index in the world, quoted daily on news broadcasts to hundreds of millions of people who have never read the Journal.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The Dow Jones Industrial Average — created by Journal co-founder Charles Dow in 1896, the stock market index that became the most widely cited measure of American economic performance.
The Journal pioneered a distinctive approach to business journalism: rigorous, fact-driven, and aimed at readers who needed accurate information to make financial decisions. Over the twentieth century, it expanded from a narrow focus on finance to comprehensive coverage of business, economics, and eventually general news, while maintaining a reputation for the quality and depth of its reporting. Its front-page feature stories — long, carefully reported narratives — became a model of the form, and the paper has won dozens of Pulitzer Prizes.
The Journal's editorial page, by contrast, became one of the most influential voices of American conservatism and free-market economics — a distinction the paper has long maintained between its news reporting (widely respected across the political spectrum) and its opinion pages (firmly on the right). This separation of news and opinion, while sometimes contested, has been a defining feature of the paper's identity for decades.
In 2007, the Journal and its parent company Dow Jones were acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $5 billion — a controversial transaction that raised concerns about editorial independence under Murdoch's ownership. The Journal remains, in 2025, one of the largest newspapers in the United States by circulation, with a substantial paid digital subscriber base that has made it one of the few newspapers to successfully navigate the transition from print to digital.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
The Journal established the template for modern business journalism. Its rigorous, fact-based approach to covering finance and the economy created a model that has been emulated worldwide. The idea that business news deserves serious, professional journalism owes much to the Journal's example.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average became the world's most recognized economic indicator. Charles Dow's simple idea — to track a basket of representative stocks to give a single measure of market performance — created a number that is reported daily to billions of people and serves as shorthand for the health of the entire economy.
The Journal's survival demonstrates one path through the crisis in print journalism. Its successful pivot to paid digital subscriptions, built on the value of its specialized reporting to readers who need it, has been studied as one of the few sustainable models for newspapers in the internet age.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On July 8, 1889, three men turned a handwritten financial bulletin into a four-page newspaper. It became the Wall Street Journal. One of them invented a stock index that is still quoted every day. The paper became the voice of American business and one of the few newspapers to survive the digital age intact.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"The Journal's policy is to give the news, not as a partisan, but in the interest of those who have invested in securities."
— Reflecting the founding philosophy of The Wall Street Journal, 1889
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the Wall Street Journal's founding, Charles Dow and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the separation of its news and editorial pages, and its acquisition by News Corporation?
