Dow, Jones were journalists first, businessmen second

Cynthia Crossen of The Wall Street Journal examines the history of the paper and its parent, Dow Jones & Co., and what shaped its successes and failures on Wednesday.

Crossen wrote, “Like most of their successors, for better and worse, Charles Dow and Edward Jones were journalists first, businessmen second. They had been working for a Wall Street information broker for two years when they and a third partner, Charles Bergstresser, decided to go into the financial-news business for themselves. In 1882, they opened shop in the basement of a lower Manhattan candy store, which is now home to the New York Stock Exchange. Seven years later, The Wall Street Journal was born.

“Mr. Dow, a reserved and tenacious reporter who took notes on his shirt cuffs, had already earned the reputation as a man who got his quotes right. Mr. Jones was a high-spirited bon vivant with a knack for analyzing financial reports.

“In those days, a financial journalist was a combination private detective, stenographer and gossip columnist. ‘Gathering news was a bare-knuckle business,’ wrote Oliver Gingold, who joined Dow Jones in 1900 and stayed for six decades. ‘Many companies refused to issue annual reports even to their own stockholders.’ Reporters spent long hours ‘waiting outside directors’ rooms or corporate offices for a chance at buttonholing an ‘insider.” Messengers shadowing the reporters ran the news back to the office where scribes made carbon copies — as many as 24 at a time — that were hand delivered to subscribers.

“What soon distinguished Dow Jones from its competitors was its revolutionary approach to financial journalism: Instead of collaborating with companies and investors to manipulate the financial markets — and taking a piece of the action — they would try to impartially distinguish fact from rumor.”

Read more here.