The Wall Street Journal

Basic facts
Location:| New York, N.Y.
Type:| News Media
Top official:| Gerard Baker, Editor in Chief
Founder(s):| Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser
Year founded:| 1889
Website:| Official website

## Contents

* 1 Background
* 2 Statistics
* 3 John Doe investigations
* 3.1 Background
* 3.2 WSJ's involvement
* 4 Recent news
* 5 See also
* 6 External links
* 7 Footnotes

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is a newspaper and news agency based in New York, N.Y. It was founded in by Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser in 1889. The WSJ is a division of Dow Jones, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The paper's primary focus is business and economy but also covers other areas of news.[1]

The WSJ has several media platforms, including a daily print paper (except Sunday), web access, tablet and smartphone app editions. According to the Pew Research Center, the paper has a Monday through Friday circulation of 2.2 million.[2] The paper also has international editions in Asia, Europe, India, Latin America and Brazil.

## Background[edit]

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) was established in 1889, printing its first edition on July 8, 1889.[3] It was founded by Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser in New York as a way to deliver news to the Wall Street Stock Exchange. Journalists Dow and Jones joined financier Bergstresser in 1889. The three men saw that there was a lacuna in the reporting of financial news and began their news business in the basement of a lower Manhattan candy store.[4] Below is a brief timeline of the history of the WSJ.

Timeline of the WSJ

* 1882: The WSJ begins as brief news missives hand-delivered to the stock exchange floor throughout the day.[5]
* 1889: The first official published edition of the WSJ was printed as an afternoon paper, selling for two cents.[5]
* 1902: Clarence Barron purchased the WSJ.[4]
* 1926: Dow Jones built a motorized ticker, which enabled the WSJ to get the news more easily and quickly.[5]
* 1934: Bernard Kilgore created a column entitled What's News, which was among the first columns to summarize news briefs.[5]
* 1962: Circulation increased when Dow Jones began to use microwave technology to reproduce newspaper pages by facsimile over great distances.[5]
* 1966: The WSJ, under Kilgore as a managing editor, had increased its circulation from 33,000 in 1941 to 1.1 million in 1966.[4]
* 1967: Dow Jones and the WSJ expanded internationally.[5]
* 1995: WSJ.com launched.[5]
* 2007: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought the Dow Jones and all of the Dow Jones' companies, including the WSJ.[6]
* 2008: The WSJ launched WSJ Magazine, a lifestyle magazine which sought to introduce a new dimension to the paper's business and economic content.[5]
* 2011: WSJ Live launched, a video news reporting initiative.[5]

Charles Dow, co-founder of The Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch's purchase of the Dow Jones brought significant change in content to the WSJ. The journal's coverage of international affairs increased by seven percent and business coverage dropped by 16 percent; politics went from nearly five percent to making up for about 18 percent of the newspaper's content.[1] Another change under Murdoch's leadership was the departure from the signature WSJ front page, which had, since its inception, been columns of print, to the introduction of large photos.[3] In part, these changes have been credited to Murdoch's desire to rival The New York Times.[1] In 2010, the WSJ introduced Greater New York, which focused on regional news.[5]

Murdoch's purchase of the WSJ has garnered some criticism; Joe Nocera of The New York Times wrote in 2011: "The Journal was turned into a propaganda vehicle for its owner’s conservative views."[7]

In 2011, News Corp was involved a phone hacking inquiry made by the U.S. Department of Justice. The WSJ was the first to report on the story, which involved its parent company. The investigation involved the hacking into the voicemails belonging to September 11 victims by News Corp employees.[8][6] The WSJ was not involved in the incident, but David Folkenflik of NPR argued, in his book Murdoch's World that editors attempted to impede WSJ coverage of the incident. The WSJ released a press statement stating that they not only covered the story but did so "extensively and aggressively".[9]

## Statistics[edit]

First issue of The Wall Street Journal, July 8, 1889.

Below is a brief overview of the circulation and demographic information for the WSJ.

Stats on the WSJ

* Circulation
* Print: #2 with 1.35 million, off the shelf and 1.14 million, subscription (as of May, 2015)[10][2]
* Digital: 648,000 digital subscriptions (as of May, 2015);[10] #1 with 115,890 paid tablet editions (as of September 30, 2014);[11] #1 with 61,562 paid mobile edition (as of September 30, 2014)[12]
* Demographics
* Age: 18-29 year olds: 24%; 30-49: 40%; 50-64: 19%; 65+: 15% (as of September, 2012)[13]
* Gender: Male: 71%; Female: 29% (as of September, 2012)[13]
* Education: College grad. and post-grad.: 56%; some college: 27%; H.S. or less: 16% (as of September, 2012)[13]
* Income: $75k+: 38%; $30k-$74,999: 31%; less than $30k: 20% (as of September, 2012)[13]

## John Doe investigations[edit]

See also: John Doe investigations related to Scott Walker

### Background[edit]

Two John Doe investigations were launched by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm (D) into the activities of staff and associates of Gov. Scott Walker (R). These investigations and the events surrounding them have been described as "the most tumultuous political events in Wisconsin in generations—perhaps in history."[14]

The first investigation, John Doe I, was launched after Walker aide Darlene Wink noticed funds were missing from the money raised by Operation Freedom, a charitable event for veterans that Walker hosted annually. Walker's office turned the case over to the Milwaukee County DA's office to investigate the missing funds.[15][14][16]

Over a year passed before the DA's office began investigating the case. By this time, Walker had announced his candidacy for Governor of Wisconsin. On May 5, 2010, Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf asked for the authority to launch a John Doe investigation into the missing funds. He asked for the John Doe on the premise of determining where the funds had originated (i.e., sponsors and donors of the Operation Freedom Event). His request was granted by Judge Neal Nettesheim, who had been appointed the John Doe I judge.[14][17]

During the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, the John Doe investigation was expanded multiple times to include a Walker donor and members of Walker's county executive staff. The homes, offices and cars of these people were raided and searched, and property, such as computers and cell phones, was seized. The investigation lasted three years and resulted in the convictions of six people, four of whom weren’t related to the missing funds on which the investigation was predicated. The announcement of the charges against the six were made in January 2012, in the midst of an effort to recall Gov. Walker due to his support for Act 10.[18][19][20]

On June 5, 2012, the recall election attempting to remove Gov. Walker (R) from office was held. Walker won re-election by a wider margin than he had when originally securing the office in 2010. In August 2012, the first John Doe investigation was rolled into a second investigation, John Doe II. This investigation was based on a theory that Governor Walker’s campaign had illegally coordinated with conservative social welfare groups that had engaged in issue advocacy during the recall elections.[21][22]

The second John Doe investigation spanned multiple counties but was consolidated into one investigation, overseen by an appointed judge and one special prosecutor, Francis Schmitz. During the early morning hours of October 3, 2013, investigators served search warrants on several homes and subpoenaed records from 29 conservative organizations. Several weeks later, on October 25, 2013, three targets of the subpoenas filed a motion to have the subpoenas quashed. The judge overseeing the investigation, Judge Gregory Peterson, granted that motion in January 2014, stating that the prosecutor's theory of criminal activity was not, in fact, criminal under Wisconsin statutes. Although Schmitz filed an appeal to a higher court, the investigation was effectively stalled.[23][24][25][26][27]

A series of lawsuits were filed, one against the John Doe prosecutors for a violation of free speech and several others against the agency that oversees campaign finance law, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB), for trying to enforce unconstitutional regulations of issue advocacy groups, the regulations on which the prosecutor's theory was based.[28][29][25][30][31][32]

The legality of the investigation eventually went before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. On July 16, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in a 4-2 decision to officially halt the John Doe II investigation. The court combined three cases into one, thereby simultaneously ruling on all three. In its ruling, the Supreme Court criticized Schmitz's handling of the case and declared the actions of Chisholm and Schmitz were violations of the targets' First Amendment rights to political speech.[33][34]

The Supreme Court, in interpreting Wisconsin's campaign finance law, ruled "that the definition of 'political purposes' [...] is unconstitutionally overbroad and vague under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 3 of the Wisconsin Constitution because its language 'is so sweeping that its sanctions may be applied to constitutionally protected conduct which the state is not permitted to regulate.'"[33]

The court noted that since issue advocacy is "beyond the reach of Ch. 11," Schmitz's theory of illegal coordination between Walker's campaign and social welfare groups was invalid. The court further declared "the special prosecutor's legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law," thereby declaring an official end to the John Doe II investigation.[33]

Regarding the other two cases addressed in the ruling, the court denied Schmitz's supervisory writ and affirmed Peterson's original motion to quash the subpoenas. It also ruled that the John Doe II judges, Peterson and Barbara Kluka before him, had not "violated a plain legal duty" by allowing the appointment of one judge and one special prosecutor to preside over a multi-county John Doe, though the court did concede "the circumstances surrounding the formation of the John Doe investigation raise serious concerns."[33]

In its ruling, the court ordered that "everything gathered as potential evidence—including thousands of pages of emails and other documents—be returned and all copies be destroyed." Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel (R) said the court's decision "closes a divisive chapter in Wisconsin history."[35][36]

### WSJ's involvement[edit]

On November 18, 2013, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial on the John Doe investigations, headlined, "Wisconsin Political Speech Raid." Eric O'Keefe, one of the targets of the second John Doe investigation, came forward to tell about what he considered the targeting of conservative organizations by the investigators. O'Keefe's organization, the Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG), was one of the targets of the investigation, as well. This story marked the first time any of the targets spoke publicly about the investigations. The Wall Street Journal continued to cover the investigations and published several follow-up pieces.[37]

## Recent news[edit]

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Wall Street Journal. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

The Wall Street Journal - Google News

## See also[edit]

* News Corp
* Dow Jones

## External links[edit]

* The Wall Street Journal
* Dow Jones
* News Corp

## Footnotes[edit]

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Pew Research Center, "How Different Is Murdoch’s New Wall Street Journal?" accessed August 18, 2015
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Pew Research Center, "Newspapers: Circulation at the Top 5 U.S. Newspapers Reporting Monday-Friday Averages," accessed August 18, 2015
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Atlantic, "What Makes The Wall Street Journal Look Like The Wall Street Journal," July 8, 2014
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 WSJ, "It All Began in the Basement of a Candy Store," August 1, 2007
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 Dow Jones, "About Us," accessed August 18, 2015
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 NPR, "How Has 'Wall Street Journal' Fared Under Murdoch?" July 22, 2011
7. ↑ The New York Times, "The Journal Becomes Fox-ified," July 15, 2011
8. ↑ WSJ, "Justice Department Prepares Subpoenas in News Corp. Inquiry," July 22, 2011
9. ↑ Huffington Post, "News Corp Bosses Tried To Curb Wall Street Journal's Phone Hacking Coverage, Book Claims," December 18, 2013
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Dow Jones, "Global Sales and Subscriptions," August 18, 2015
11. ↑ Pew Research Center, "Newspapers: Top 5 U.S. Daily Newspapers with Paid Tablet Editions," accessed August 18, 2015
12. ↑ Pew Research Center, "Newspapers: Top 5 U.S. Daily Newspapers with Paid Smartphone/Mobile Editions," accessed August 18, 2015
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Pew Research Center, "Demographics and Political Views of News Audiences," accessed August 18, 2015
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Milwaukee Division, "Eric O’Keefe, and Wisconsin Club for Growth, Inc.," accessed February 23, 2015
15. ↑ Free Republic, "Operation Freedom: Milwaukee County Zoo," July 1, 2005
16. ↑ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Authorities seize computer of Walker aide," August 23, 2010
17. ↑ Wisconsin Reporter, "John Doe I judge says he’s not responsible for John Doe II," June 10, 2014
18. ↑ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Walker appointees charged in John Doe investigation," January 6, 2012
19. ↑ Wisconsin State Journal, "New charges in John Doe investigation allege pattern of illegal fundraising among Walker aides," January 27, 2012
20. ↑ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Walker recall effort kicks off," November 15, 2011
21. ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "Canvass Results for 2012 JUNE 5 RECALL ELECTION," accessed July 2, 2015
22. ↑ United States District Court Eastern District of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), "O'Keefe et al v. Schmitz et al," February 10, 2014
23. ↑ United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, "ERIC O’KEEFE, et al., v. JOHN T. CHISHOLM, et al.," accessed July 19, 2015
24. ↑ Wall Street Journal, "Wisconsin Political Speech Raid," November 18, 2013
25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 State of Wisconsin Circuit Court Waukesha County, "ERIC O’KEEFE, and WISCONSIN CLUB FOR GROWTH, INC. v. WISCONSIN GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY BOARD, and KEVIN J. KENNEDY," accessed July 19, 2015
26. ↑ United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, "ERIC O'KEEFE and WISCONSIN CLUB FOR GROWTH INCORPORATED, v. JOHN T. CHISHOLM, BRUCE J. LANDGRAF and DAVID ROBLES," accessed July 19, 2015
27. ↑ Wall Street Journal, "Wisconsin Political Speech Victory," January 10, 2014
28. ↑ United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Milwaukee Division, "ERIC O’KEEFE, and WISCONSIN CLUB FOR GROWTH, INC., v. FRANCIS SCHMITZ, et. al.," accessed July 19, 2015
29. ↑ Watchdog.org, "Target files civil rights lawsuit against Wisconsin’s John Doe prosecutors," February 10, 2014
30. ↑ STATE OF WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT, "Citizens for Responsible Government Advocates, Inc., v. Thomas Barland, et. al.," accessed July 19, 2015
31. ↑ Watchdog.org, "GAB, Milwaukee County DA bail on key provision behind war on conservatives," November 6, 2014
32. ↑ Watchdog.org, "Federal judge’s judgment takes John Doe probe off life support," February 1, 2015
33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 33.2 33.3 Supreme Court of Wisconsin, "Case No. 2013AP296-OA & 2014AP417-W through 2014AP421-W & 2013AP2504-W through 2013AP2508-W," accessed July 17, 2015
34. ↑ Watchdog.org, "Wisconsin Supreme Court shuts down John Doe investigation, affirms First Amendment," July 16, 2015
35. ↑ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "4-2 ruling halts inquiry focusing on campaign finance laws," July 16, 2015
36. ↑ Wisconsin State Journal, "Supreme Court ends John Doe probe that threatened Scott Walker's presidential bid," July 16, 2015
37. ↑ Wall Street Journal, "Wisconsin Political Speech Raid," November 18, 2014

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