The makings of a legendCharles H. Dow, Edward D. Jones and Charles Bergstresser founded Dow Jones & Company in 1882. The trio worked out of a small basement office near the New York Stock Exchange. Dow Jones soon offered a two-page bulletin that introduced the Dow Jones Average. On July 8, 1889, the company sold its first issue of The Wall Street Journal at two cents a copy. Later came the Dow Jones News Service, which sent information over telegraph wires and printed it with the help of tickers.
Today, Dow Jones is a leading distributor of business knowledge and news to harried businesspeople worldwide. The Wall Street Journal remains the company's flagship operation. Including its European and Asian versions, the venerable publication is read by more than 1.9 million people all over the world. While Dow Jones still trails Reuters in terms of worldwide distribution, the company is the leader of the U.S. business information market. The company also offers other business publications such as SmartMoney, a successful financial advice magazine published in partnership with Hearst Corporation, and Barron's, a business weekly, and financial information news wires.
At the vanguard
Dow Jones has been a pioneer in developing interactive, online services, including Dow Jones Interactive and The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition at www.wsj.com. The company also provides services that have become inexorably linked to the character of the stock market itself. The Dow Jones Averages, organized by industry, report the stock performances of various leading companies. Today, these averages - which track industrial, transportation, utility, and composite stocks - serve as a leading indicator of stock market performance and economic strength. A related service, the Dow Jones Global Indexes, tracks 2,900 stocks in 34 countries and 121 industry groups.
Fluctuations
Although The Wall Street Journal has always performed exceedingly well, parent company Dow Jones has had its difficulties. Dow Jones sold its troubled Dow Jones Markets unit, and in 1999 it agreed to sell its Dow Jones Financial Publishing Corp. to Wicks Business Information, LLC. In addition, the heirs of the Dow Jones' fortune became increasingly upset - and vocal - about the unfocused management of the company. Rumors of a sale of the company, possibly to The Washington Post, spread. In early 1998, the company reported an astounding $802 million loss for the year.
Paralleling trends in the stock market, rises have followed Dow Jones' falls. Results from the first quarter of 2000 exhibited gains in revenue and in earnings. Recent partnerships have bolstered Dow Jones' Internet presence. In November 1999, it teamed with Reuters to create Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive, LLC. The next year, the company partnered with Excite@Home to launch Work.com. Also in 2000, Dow Jones produced four new stock market indexes in Europe in an attempt to establish primacy among that continent's market indexes.
