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Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Company Information

Leslie Hinton ,

1 World Financial Center

200 Liberty Street

New York, NY 10281

USA

Phone: (212) 416-2000

Fax: (212) 416-4348


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Dow Jones

WHERE THEY CAME FROM
In 1882, Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser began publishing a handwritten newsletter out of a basement office on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. Messengers delivered it to customers who awaited the daily Morning Gossip column and the Dow Jones Averages, which tracked 11 stocks and later became the Dow Jones Industrial Average. After Dow died in 1902, Clarence Barron, the newsletter’s stout Boston correspondent, bought the publication, which became the Wall Street Journal. When Barron died in 1928, he left behind a publication known for its lively editorial voice and the scrupulousness with which its political ideology was kept from the news pages. Also part of the company were the magazine Barron’s and a motor-driven news ticker that would become Dow Jones Newswires. Hugh Bancroft, Barron’s son-in-law, took over, and the company is still controlled by the Bancroft family.

WHAT THEY DO
The Wall Street Journal and its offshoots, including Asian and European editions and online versions, generate the majority of the company’s revenues, but the company also owns the monthly magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, the news website MarketWatch, a few community newspapers, and Factiva. It also jointly publishes SmartMoney magazine with Hearst.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
In 1941, boy wonder Barney Kilgore became managing editor of the Journal, exhibiting a talent not only for writing about money but also for making it. His reporters won five Pulitzer Prizes for the paper, and he broadened its coverage and cleaned up its design. When he died, in 1967, he left behind a nationally respected paper with a circulation of 1 million and annual revenue of more than $13 million.

Dow Jones then branched out, acquiring the Far Eastern Economic Review and launching the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal in 1976. Norman Pearlstine, who was managing editor of the Asian edition and bureau chief in Tokyo and who later became Time’s editor in chief, is credited with giving the flagship its modern identity in various editorial positions until 1992, including launching Walter Mossberg’s popular tech column. Then, in 1991, it named another youngster, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Peter Kann, as C.E.O. and chairman. He married a fellow Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist at the paper, Karen Elliott House, who became publisher. A dominant media couple in New York, they presided over a difficult time at the Journal, and after becoming known for tempers and excessive salaries in the midst of slow growth, they both left their positions under pressure in early 2006, although Kann is still listed as Dow Jones’ chairman.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG
News sense, yes; business sense, not so much. In 1975, C.E.O. Warren Philips reportedly turned away entrepreneur Steve Jobs when he was seeking startup funding for what would become Apple. A year earlier, the company reportedly said no to buying the financial data company Telerate for $1 million; Dow Jones ended up paying $1.6 billion for Telerate in 1990, when it was already past its prime. Dow Jones sold the company in 1998 for a fraction of what it paid, which contributed to $802 million in losses that year.

WHAT’S NEXT
In 2006, Dow Jones handed the reins to its first non-journalist in more than 70 years, Richard Zannino, who had been C.O.O. since 2002. Its stock jumped 10 percent the same day. To cut costs, Zannino literally cut the paper, from 15 inches to 12 inches wide, at the beginning of 2007, and he’s expected to lead Dow Jones into a new age because of his extensive business background. For a start, he sold several community newspapers for more than $280 million in December 2006 and bought Reuters half-stake in Factiva. —Beth Kwo

 

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BOARD MEMBERS

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