The marvelous historical archive of major newspapers operated by ProQuest LLC in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at last count listed well over 12 million entries for The Wall Street Journal since its founding in 1889. Those entries range from 2,000-word articles to simple masthead data. The number increases, of course, with each new issue. The archive is easily searchable, and much of the original material in this book derives from reading computer printouts of the actual pages preserved by ProQuest.
I’ve only skimmed the highlights of Journal commentary as world history unfolded. But I’ve attempted to provide a glimpse of what Journal editors and writers had to say as major events stirred them into quick action and forced them to offer the best interpretations they could in the heat of breaking news. Barney Kilgore once said that newspaper articles are the first draft of history, and the writers of those first drafts did so under sometimes severe deadline pressures, depending upon how close to what editors call “drop-dead lock-up” the events occurred.
But on the whole, the Journal record for analyzing news developments and providing informed commentary has been good enough to attract a very large following. Going into 2017, the Journal was still adding to its more than 2.5 million print and online subscribers worldwide. Dow Jones CEO William Lewis described the operations of the modern Journal in an in-house newsletter praising employees for their response to a big East Coast snowstorm on January 30, 2016: “Delivering 1.6 million Wall Street Journal print editions every day is a global task, requiring logistical expertise, tenacity and a decent sense of humor. The papers come from 35 printing plants, 18 plane flights, 538 trucks and thousands of individual carriers.”
The Dow Jones operatives producing the online WSJ.com that Gordon Crovitz had pioneered were constantly improving the online formats, particularly to make access to news easy for subscribers using mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads. They had recognized that many people now get most of their news and information by swiping their smartphone screens and opening up an app such as WSJ. A smartphone has a more restricted viewing space than a print newspaper, but on the other hand, electronic delivery is more flexible in being able to deliver up-to-the-minute news, comments on articles and access to earlier columns and features offered only online.
The opinion pages, which still attract a remarkably high proportion of Journal readers, have adapted to cyberspace as well. James Taranto had firmly established the Bartley-invented Best-of-the-Web column as a popular online feature and as 2016 ended moved up to editorial page features editor, replacing Melanie Kirkpatrick, who had returned from retirement temporarily to fill a gap created when Mark Lasswell left to write a book. Mary Kissel was doing WSJ.Com videos interviewing interesting visitors to the Journal in New York. Bret Stephens and others were doing audio podcasts. On “The Journal Editorial Report,” a weekend public affairs program on Fox cable news, Paul Gigot was still gathering together several staff writers and usually a guest to discuss the issues of the day. It has about 1.5 million viewers.
Whereas a Leisure & Arts page was an innovation not many years ago, under the Murdoch regime, the Journal now has a full Saturday Review section devoted to books, theater and other cultural subjects, along with other arts coverage on weekdays. All these offerings have made opinion writing as well as news pretty much a 24-hour-a-day business, with pressures to stay on top of the news greater than ever before.
As the year 2017 dawned, Journal columnists were offering readers a broad range of discussion. Mary O’Grady’s Americas columns illuminating the often tempestuous ways of Latin governance were often translated into Spanish and Portuguese in Latin American newspapers. William McGurn, who had left the Journal to write speeches for George W. Bush and had done a stint as editorial page editor of the New York Post, was back writing a weekly column on domestic policy. Holman Jenkins was delving into the intricacies of business and government strategies. William Galston of Brookings Institution was providing readers with an alternative point of view more aligned with the Democratic Party.
Dan Henninger’s Wonder Land column leaned heavily toward cultural trends, and Karl Rove, the big-league political strategist for George W. Bush and others, monitored political trends. Kim Strassel, writing from Washington, provided insights into the various shenanigans that go on in the nation’s capital.
Alas, Bret Stephens’ rebellion against the Republican Party had attracted the attention of Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger III, CEO of the New York Times, whose sympathies lie with the Democrats. To liven up his sometimes tired-sounding and predictable stable of columnists, Pinch made Bret a generous offer, inviting him to bring his talents to the Times. Bret accepted. It was a loss to the Journal of a gifted writer who apparently was no longer comfortable with the Journal’s traditions.
On the op-ed page, Peggy Noonan, also a former presidential speech writer for Ronald Reagan, offered readers her special conversational style in discussing events of the day. Jason Riley, a former editorial page staffer who had moved to the Manhattan Institute, provided a weekly column that was notably out of step with African American demands for affirmative action. Jason’s book, “Please Stop Helping Us,” had argued that affirmative action often did his fellow African Americans more harm than good.
As 2017 wore on, the editorial page view of President Trump was more accepting than it had been during his campaign, partly because of his many excellent choices of cabinet officers and agency heads. It gave support to his efforts to eliminate wasteful and coercive federal regulation and to reform the tax code and ObamaCare. But it continued to attack Trump’s protectionist initiatives and nativist tendencies and the absolutism of the troublesome “freedom caucus” Republicans in the House. In other words, the Journal stuck to its traditional positions.
Over the course of time, Journal writers have often been surprised by unexpected developments. But, of course, no reporter can ever know the full story of events he is covering on the fly. Even historians, years later, often remain puzzled as evidenced by the continuing mystery, for example, of who might have encouraged Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate JFK. But on the whole, the Journal commentary record looks good. If that sounds self-serving from someone who was for many years one of the opinion writers and editors, so be it. I was just one of many and by no means the most talented.
What is truly remarkable to me, however, is how consistent the Journal’s commentary has been for all those years going back to the thoughtful and upright Charles Dow. “Free people, free markets” has served as an inspiring banner to both writers and readers. It has been frequently under fire, usually not directly, but most often through arguments favoring expanded state powers, and it is a bit battle worn in this modern era. There are no guarantees in history; entire civilizations have been destroyed by brutal tyrannies. But those of us who have marched under the Journal editorial page banner hope it can be kept flying for another 100 years.