The Wall Street Journal celebrates its 125th birthday today. The first issue of the New York-based newspaper was published on 8 July 1889.
The four-page paper was founded by three financial journalists — Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser — who believed there was a need for objective news about business and markets at a time of increasing industrialisation.
By the 1920s, under the ownership of Clarence Barron, the paper was selling 50,000 copies a day. His descendants, the Bancroft family, saw sales grow to more than 1m in the 1960s.
It was the best-selling newspaper in the USA in 2007 when it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Now it lays claim to having more than 2.2m subscribers.
In an anniversary letter to readers, editor-in-chief Gerard Baker writes:
"We reach millions on mobile phones, desktops and tablets, around the clock and across the globe, every day... We publish 12 global versions in nine languages, and have reporters in more than 75 countries."
The paper's website carries an archive of stories it has covered over the past 125 years along with a series of articles, one of which is a rapid history of newspaper readership in the States in a watchable four-minute video presented by Jason Bellini.
