From Wall to Main

The biggest running story in the U.S. for the past decade has been the lusty growth of the nation's economy. Nevertheless, most U.S. dailies still tuck away the important stories of business on financial pages, where they are not only hard to find but often badly written in financial jargon. One notable exception is Manhattan's Wall Street Journal, which consistently plays up business news, makes it as lively and readable as news of crisis and crime. As a result, the Journal has written a lusty success story of its own since World War II. In ten years, the Journal has increased circulation more than 500%, built its staff from 704 to 1,440. To its San Francisco edition it has added printing plants in Chicago and Dallas, from which virtually identical editions reach all but a handful of the paper's estimated 383,000 subscribers on the day of publication.

This week the Journal was getting ready to start up its press in a new Washington plant, where 120,000 copies daily will be printed for readers from Capitol Hill to Pittsburgh. In addition to interpreting Government policies as they affect the businessman, the Journal in recent years has sharpened its straight political coverage, has gained circulation from Washington to the Deep South. The new plant, linked by Electro-Typesetter circuits to editorial offices in Manhattan, will be strategically located to serve this burgeoning market. In addition, it will relieve overstrained Manhattan presses, giving the Journal the mechanical capacity to meet a demand that has steadily pushed its national circulation ahead of any other U.S. daily and is still growing at the rate of nearly 20% a year.

Experts & Nonexperts. The Journal has come up the hard way, nevertheless. Sorely hit by the Depression, it was limping along on 30,000 circulation in 1940 when Managing Editor (now President) Bernard Kilgore decided to turn the stodgy financial sheet into a readable paper aimed at the average businessman as well as the expert.

For the nonexpert (including 90,000 subscribers who are not directly engaged in business) and for faster reading, the Journal uses a unique six-column format, plays the news in a way opposite to most dailies: spot news stories usually run on inside pages, while Page One is given over to national and world news sum maries, interpretive and feature stories, all occupying the same places from day to day, e.g., daily Page One leaders range chattily (as they did last week) from Europe's motel boom to building trends in hospitals and supermarkets. Barney Kilgore has reluctantly expanded the Journal from an average of 16 to 24 pages daily since 1940 to make room for more advertising, but his editors still squeeze the most from every inch of space by only rarely running pictures.

Ups & Downs. But the thriving Journal never grudges the time and expense needed to get the news, e.g., 30 reporters were assigned to this week's Page One leader on the steel shortage. The Journal's biggest local staff (about 90 newsmen) is still in Manhattan, but some 160 staffers work out of bureaus in 17 other U.S. and Canadian cities, bringing the Journal a lot closer to Main than Wall Street. Says President Kilgore: "If we ever get rid of the ups and downs of business, it will be because people now are reading much more about it and are acting on what they've learned by reading."

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