Wall Street Journal
With the green light in place for Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion takeover of Dow Jones & Co., the focus for many is on the future of its most iconic property: The Wall Street Journal.
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Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser create Dow Jones & Co., setting up shop in the basement of 15 Wall Street, writing and delivering news bulletins called "flimsies." A year later they start putting out what they call the Customers' Afternoon Letter.
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The Customers' Afternoon Letter becomes The Wall Street Journal, containing four pages and selling for two cents.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average is launched.
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Clarence W. Barron — who had been the firm's first out-of-town correspondent, based in Boston — buys control of Dow Jones, with other partners, after the death of Charles Dow and the retirement of Edward Jones.Nineteen years later, Barron launches the financial weekly that bears his own name. Barron ultimately passed on his shares to his stepdaughter, Jane Barron Bancroft. The company stayed in the hands of the Bancroft family for the next century. By 2007, there were three dozen family members serving as trustees.
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The Journal wins its first Pulitzer Prize, for editorials by William Henry Grimes. Over the next 60 years, it will win 32 more.
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The Wall Street Journal becomes the largest paid-circulation newspaper in America.
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The Journal begins experimenting with online publishing, launching in earnest the following year, scoring what is generally acknowledged to be unusual success in this new arena.
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Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, 38, is kidnapped by terrorists in Pakistan, and a month later, is beheaded.
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Media mogul Rupert Murdoch approaches the Bancroft family - majority stakeholders in Dow Jones - with a $5 billion offer for his News Corporation to buy the company for $60 a share.
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A century of family ownership of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. ends as Rupert Murdoch adds a crown jewel to his global media empire, News Corp., after the deal won sufficient support from a deeply divided Bancroft family. Some family members actively sought alternatives to Murdoch — without success. One of them, Leslie Hill, quit Dow Jones' board as the deal edged toward completion.
TimeLine: Rupert Murdoch
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Credits:
CBS/AP/Dow Jones
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