20th century
In the months before his death in 1902, Dow arranged to sell Dow Jones and the Journal to Clarence W. Barron, the Boston correspondent for the Journal since 1889, for $130,000 (equivalent to $4,837,500 in 2025). Because Barron had financial difficulties, his wife Jessie Waldron Barron made the $2,500 down payment to buy Dow Jones in 1902; Clarence would first own a Dow Jones share about ten years later.
Under Barron's ownership, Thomas F. Woodlock was editor of the Journal from 1902 to 1905. By the end of Woodlock's tenure, daily circulation for the Journal rose from 7,000 to 11,000. William Peter Hamilton became lead editorial writer in 1908, a time when the Journal began reflecting the views of Barron. Hamilton wrote what Scharff considered "daily sermons in support of free-market capitalism".
Barron and his predecessors were credited with creating an atmosphere of fearless, independent financial reporting—a novelty in the early days of business journalism. In 1921, Barron's, the United States's premier financial weekly, was founded. Scharff described the newspaper in the Barron era as "Wall Street's public defender" against regulatory efforts by the U.S. Congress. Circulation continued to rise, reaching 18,750 to 1920 and 52,000 briefly in 1928, but did not exceed that of its main competitor, The Magazine of Wall Street, which was the leading financial publication of the era. Barron died in 1928, a year before Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that greatly affected the Great Depression in the United States. Barron's descendants, the Bancroft family, would continue to control the company until 2007.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 would be yet another challenge to the Journal on top of Barron's death. William Peter Hamilton died of pneumonia on December 9, 1929, aged 63. Circulation of the Journal, having surpassed 50,000 in 1928, dropped below 28,000 in the 1930s, and the newspaper downsized from 28 to 16 pages in the 1930s as well. Dow Jones president Hugh Bancroft retired in 1932; following his death in 1933, his widow Jane Waldron Bancroft appointed Kenneth Craven "Casey" Hogate as new company president. Hogate envisioned expanding the scope of the Journal to a "more general business paper" beyond stock and bond numbers.
Expanding westward, The Wall Street Journal debuted a West Coast edition on October 21, 1929, The Wall Street Journal Pacific Coast Edition. The Pacific Coast Edition focused on California businesses and replicated some items from the regular Wall Street Journal; however, its circulation never exceeded 3,000, and the Great Depression led numerous subscription cancellations.
By 1931, Bernard Kilgore became news editor for The Wall Street Journal, having joined the Journal copy desk in 1929. He began writing a column for the Pacific Coast Edition called "Dear George", a feature explaining obscure financial topics in simpler, plain rhetoric. "Dear George" sharply contrasted with other Wall Street Journal articles that relied on jargon that was incomprehensible even to its own reporters. The Eastern edition of the Journal began carrying "Dear George", and beginning in 1932, Kilgore wrote "Dear George" three times a week from New York for the Journal. Then in 1934, Kilgore began writing a daily news digest "What's News" for the Journal front page. Kilgore's writings attracted the attention of the White House; President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly recommended Kilgore's work about pension payments for World War I veterans and a Supreme Court decision on the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. However, the Journal continued to struggle financially, with circulation stagnant at 32,000 in 1940. Most editions were only 12 to 14 pages long, and Dow Jones made only $69,000 of profits on $2 million of revenue, mostly due to its news ticker. Scharff observed a lack of coverage about a possible U.S. role in World War II.
In the 1940s, Dow Jones took steps to restructure the Journal. Kilgore was named managing editor of the Journal in 1941 and Dow Jones CEO in 1945. Scharff described Kilgore's approach to journalism: "A Journal story had to satisfy its sophisticated readership, but it also had to be clear enough not to discourage neophytes." Additionally, Kilgore aimed to have the newspaper appeal to a national audience, by making the East Coast and West Coast editions of the Journal more homogeneous. Until printing presses and reporting bureaus could be opened on location, photographs could not be included in the Journal.
In 1947, the paper won its first Pulitzer Prize for William Henry Grimes's editorials. Also in May 1947, the Journal launched a Southwest edition based in Dallas. The newspaper also added a new slogan in 1949: "Everywhere, Men Who Get Ahead in Business Read The Wall Street Journal." Circulation grew by nearly four-fold, from 32,000 in 1940 to 140,000 in 1949; however, Kilgore's editorial reforms of the Journal had not yet entered popular understanding.
The first major journalism award for the Journal was a Sigma Delta Chi public service award, for stories in late 1952 exposing links between Empire Mail Order and organized crime. These stories followed news that Howard Hughes sold RKO Pictures to Empire Mail Order. Circulation of the Journal continued increasing throughout the 1950s, to 205,000 in 1951, 400,000 in 1955, and over 500,000 by 1957.
Warren H. Phillips became managing editor of The Wall Street Journal in 1957 after being promoted from Chicago bureau manager. Phillips was Jewish, in contrast to the largely midwestern, WASP management of the Journal at the time. Phillips, a former socialist, shifted his political views in the 1950s to reflect social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. Under Phillips, the Journal provided in-depth coverage of the civil rights movement, on the grounds that it "was something that the average businessman needed to know about". For instance, Journal coverage of the Little Rock Central High School integration crisis went beyond the largely visual, emotional elements on newspapers and television, in depicting local citizens as supportive of integration in contrast to Governor Orval Faubus and other local politicians.
During the 1962–1963 New York City newspaper strike, the Journal was the only daily newspaper to continue printing in New York City; however, after the strike, Kilgore ordered the printing presses moved from New York to Chicopee, Massachusetts effective July 1, 1963. Although Kilgore did not publicly explain his rationale then, Scharff wrote in 1986 that the move resulted from feuds between Dow Jones and the printer's union.
By Kilgore's death in 1967, Wall Street Journal circulation exceeded one million. In 1967, Dow Jones Newswires began a major expansion outside of the United States ultimately placing its journalists in every major financial center in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and Africa. In 1970, Dow Jones bought the Ottaway newspaper chain, which at the time comprised nine dailies and three Sunday newspapers. Later, the name was changed to Dow Jones Local Media Group. The first strike affecting a Journal printing plant was a three-day strike at Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1967; that would be followed by a weeklong strike by truck drivers at the South Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1970.
The period from 1971 to 1997 brought about a series of launches, acquisitions, and joint ventures, including "Factiva", The Wall Street Journal Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, the WSJ.com website, Dow Jones Indexes, MarketWatch, and "WSJ Weekend Edition". In 2007, News Corp. acquired Dow Jones. WSJ., a luxury lifestyle magazine, was launched in 2008.
A complement to the print newspaper, The Wall Street Journal Online, was launched in 1996 and has allowed access only by subscription from the beginning. A weekly (later daily) crossword edited by Mike Shenk was introduced in 1998.
