Dow Jones & Company, Inc. was founded in the fall of 1882 when two young reporters from New England, Charles H. Dow and Edward D. Jones, who worked for a New York financial news agency, struck out on their own. "Company" was a third reporter, Charles M. Bergstresser. Their office: a small basement room down the hall from a soda fountain near the New York Stock Exchange.

Messrs. Dow and Bergstresser submitted their stories to Mr. Jones, who edited them and dictated bulletins to scribes. The product of their work, handwritten sheets called "flimsies," was then delivered to subscribers in the Wall Street area by messengers. In November 1883, the company introduced its first formal publication, the Customers' Afternoon Letter, a printed two-pager that summarized the bulletins that had been dispatched during the day. A year later, the Letter introduced the Dow Jones Average, a stock price index based on a formula devised by Charles Dow.

Business boomed, and by 1889 the staff numbered 50. Clarence W. Barron, who ran a financial news bureau in Boston, became the firm's first out-of-town correspondent. It was decided to turn the Customers' Afternoon Letter into a newspaper that would be called The Wall Street Journal and the first issue appeared on July 8, 1889. It was four pages, sold for two cents and carried advertising that cost 20 cents a line.

The Journal prospered but Messrs. Dow, Jones and Bergstresser saw the need for a faster way to deliver the news. They created the Dow Jones News Service, which operated over telegraph wires. Known as the "broadtape," the service employed printing devices, called "tickers," that were driven by weights that had to be handwound every half hour.

In 1902 Clarence Barron purchased control of the company following Charles Dow's death. Journal circulation was abut 7,000 and by 1920 it had reached 18,750. Mr. Barron introduced modern printing equipment and the newsgathering side of the company expanded. By the end of the twenties, more than 50,000 copies of the Journal were rolling off the press each publishing day.

Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly made its debut in 1921, with Clarence Barron himself serving as its first editor. Priced at 10 cents an issue, the tabloid was an immediate success in investment and financial circles, reaching a circulation of 30,000 in its sixth year.

The broadtape also underwent a major expansion. Service was introduced in Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit in 1925. Boston, Washington and Richmond joined the circuit in 1927, followed a year later by Los Angeles, San Francisco and cities in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio.

Clarence Barron died in 1928 and was succeeded by Hugh Bancroft, his son-in-law, who served as president of Dow Jones for the next five years. Kenneth C. Hogate became the Journal's managing editor and took the paper to California. The first issue of The Wall Street Journal's Pacific Coast Edition, published in San Francisco, appeared eight days before the stock-market crash of October 1929. It had its own staff and carried West Coast news.

Closely tied to the fortunes of the financial community, the Journal felt the full impact of the stock-market collapse and the Depression. Circulation slipped below 30,000. The "broadtape," which expanded into Canada in 1937, provided the major source of Dow Jones income during the thirties.

In 1941, Bernard Kilgore became managing editor of the Journal (and later, in 1945, chief executive of Dow Jones). The architect of the paper as it exists today, he took the Journal even further afield into one that saw its beat encompassing all aspects of business, economics and consumer affairs, as well as all aspects of life that had an impact on business.

Coverage of the stock market and the corporate world remained the Journal's prime objective, but it no longer dominated the paper. The changes worked. Circulation began an upsurge in the forties, moving back to 50,000 by the end of World War II, then doubling to 100,000 two years later. Barney Kilgore made many innovations. Among them, the concept that the reader in Portland, Oregon, wants and needs the same business news as his counterpart in Portland, Maine, led to a change in the Pacific Coast Edition, which abandoned its West Coast features and became a duplicate of the Eastern edition. A Southwest edition of the Journal was launched in 1948, printed in a new printing plant in Dallas. The development of sophisticated new technology to make sure that all editions were the same started the Journal on its way to becoming the country's first and only national business newspaper.

The 1950s were a period of growth. The fourth regional edition of the Journal, the Midwest, published in Chicago made its debut. Circulation of the Journal was 520,000 by the end of the decade. At Dow Jones, growth -- and change -- were even more dramatic in the 1960s. In 1962, the company launched The National Observer, its first new product since Barron's was introduced in 1921. A weekly that reported and interpreted national and foreign news, arts, sports and consumer affairs, the Observer's circulation rose to more than 500,000 before, running losses, it ceased publication in 1977.

In 1966, the circulation of The Wall Street Journal reached the one million mark. Coverage of social issues, science, education and foreign affairs had been added or expanded at the same time business news coverage was being improved.

In 1967, the company's experience with the broadtape led to the AP-Dow Jones Economic Report, a joint venture with the Associated Press that transmits business and economic news to many countries throughout the world. Research facilities established in South Brunswick, NJ, in the early sixties, led to a series of breakthroughs on the production front, including microwave transmission of full-page images from plant to plant. Offset printing and the then radically new process of photographic composition of "type" were also introduced. A milestone of another sort was passed during the sixties. On May 28, 1963, 110,000 shares of Dow Jones common stock were sold to the public. Clarence Barron's heirs held almost all the stock until then, and still retain majority control.

In late 1967, Barney Kilgore died at 59. William Kerby succeeded him and served as chief executive until 1975. He was succeeded in that year by Warren H. Phillips. Dow Jones expanded its operations further at the start of the seventies by acquiring the Ottaway group of community newspapers.

In 1971, Dow Jones pioneered electronic publishing. The operation, now known as the Dow Jones News/Retrieval Service, permits subscribers to select and retrieve news and other information on their computer screens. Dow Jones also expanded abroad, first with investments in the Far Eastern Economic Review, then with The Asian Wall Street Journal, the first daily newspaper to provide comprehensive coverage of business and economic news for an Asia-wide audience. The Asian Journal began publication in Hong Kong in 1976.

The 1980s was a decade of significant innovation for Dow Jones. In 1982, the circulation of The Wall Street Journal reached more than 2 million. The company pushed vigorously into data-base publishing and television and extended its commitment to global publishing by introducing The Wall Street Journal Europe, published in Brussels, in 1983.

Dow Jones Today

The company today is an enterprise of more than 11,000 employees who focus on three major segments, defined by the needs and demands of our global customers: business publishing, financial information services and community newspapers.

Business Publishing

The business publishing segment provides a broad range of business people with business news and information through a variety of media, including print, electronic distribution and television. It includes The Wall Street Journal and its international editions, The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Asian Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal also provides branded component pages of news for leading national newspapers throughout the world.

The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly Edition is a U.S. newspaper containing Asian news. The National Business Employment Weekly is a newspaper of career articles and employment advertising from The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition is a version of the Journal for high school students. Although the Journal is both the source and the inspiration for the publications in this group, each of them is a distinctive publication in its own right and meets specific needs to business people, students and educators.

The magazine group includes Barron's, a weekly magazine of investment news and opinion; the Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia's leading English-language newsweekly, based in Hong Kong; and the Dow Jones Financial Publishing Group, a publisher of information for financial planning professionals. SmartMoney: The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business is a monthly magazine that made its debut in 1991. SmartMoney is a joint venture with the Hearst Corp. with editorial content and advertising sales provided by Dow Jones and business management by Hearst.

Television

"The Wall Street Journal Report on Television," a syndicated U.S. television show was the company's first foray into television and has run nationally since 1982. Abroad, Dow Jones owns 70% of European Business News, a 24-hour business news network based in London, and 49.25% of Asia Business News, a business news network based in Singapore.

Dow Jones Interactive Publishing

The mission of Dow Jones Interactive Publishing is to be the leading provider of electronic business and financial news and information to corporations, business professionals and private investors. Its information products and services are available on a broad range of electronic media including desktop and portable personal computers, pagers, facsimile machines, radio and telephone.

Dow Jones News/Retrieval is a database providing computerized business and financial news and information. The Private Investor Edition is a similar service for personal investors. DowVision delivers news and information through corporate computer systems. IDD Enterprises publishes Investment Dealers' Digest and other publications, both print and electronic. The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition is the Internet's first continuously updated market news publication.

"The Wall Street Journal Report" and "The Dow Jones Report" are radio broadcasts that are aired and updated throughout the business day. JournalPhone is an interactive news service accessed by telephone.

Financial Information Services

Financial Information Services provides financial services professionals with real-time business and financial news, quotes, trading systems and analytical tools.

Dow Jones Markets is a supplier of computerized financial information and data for all major financial markets. The Dow Jones News Service covers the U.S. equities market and the news that affects it. Dow Jones 90-Day News/Retrieval allows users to retrieve this information for up to three months. AP-Dow Jones is a joint venture between the Associated Press and Dow Jones and specializes in the coverage of international economic, business and financial news. Capital Markets Report provides coverage of the fixed-income and futures markets. Professional Investor Report provides coverage of unusual stock activity. Asian Equities Report is available in Asia and covers Asian equities markets. Emerging Markets Report provides coverage on Treasurys, mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds and current events. Teleres is a commercial real-estate information service.

Community Newspapers

Ottaway Newspapers Inc. publishes 19 daily local newspapers in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. It also publishes twice-weekly newspapers in New Hampshire and weekly newspapers in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Hampshire and two biweekly newspapers in Minnesota.

Investments and Affiliates

Dow Jones has investments in publishing and related ventures in North and South America, Europe and Asia, as well as newsprint mills in the U.S. and Canada.

Dow Jones has a minority interest in VWD-Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste GmbH, a German news agency specializing in business and economic news and information. Dow Jones has had a joint venture, Handelsblatt-Dow Jones GmbH, since 1991, with the von Holtzbrinck Group, publisher of Germany's leading business daily. In 1994, Dow Jones formed DJA Partners, a general partnership with Aegon USA Inc. that gathers and distributes commercial real estate data, information and analytics through the on-line service, Teleres. In South America, Dow Jones owns 50% of AmericaEconomia, a Spanish-language business magazine.

Dow Jones' newsprint-mill affiliates are Bear Island Paper Co. and Bear Island Timberlands Co., both of Richmond, VA. and F.F. Soucy Inc. and Partners, of Rivere du Loup, Quebec.