The Wall Street Journal is a leading publisher of original business news and financial information. WSJ.com offer access to the full content of the print edition of The Wall Street Journal as well as a variety of breaking news streams, interactive features, videos and blogs. According to the publisher, "WSJ.com reaches a global audience of 42.4 million digital readers per month."1
Content Description
The U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal is published Monday to Saturday. The Asia and Europe editions are published Monday to Friday. The print weekday edition delivers content as follows:
- SECTION A: World, political, business news and opinion (also includes lifestyle coverage)
- SECTION B: Business & finance
- JOURNAL REPORT (Mondays): Topical writing and analysis on thematic subjects
- MANSION (Fridays): "Global luxury real estate section"
WSJ Weekend (published Saturdays) includes main sections as described above and features sections designated "REVIEW" (analysis and insight across a range of topics.) and "OFF-DUTY" (incorporating articles on style & fashion, design, travel, eating & drinking, and "Gear & Gadgets").
WSJ.com offers additional content well beyond articles published in the print edition. A scan of the print edition ("In Today's Paper") shows approximately 80-90 primary articles published per day. The article archive for WSJ.com suggests ca. 130-150 articles published online per day.2 The site presents articles according to major sections (World, U.S., Politics, Economy, Business, Tech, Markets, Opinion, Life & Arts, Real Estate, WSJ. Magazine), with subheadings under many of these categories. For each section, content includes articles, columns & blogs, graphics, video content, podcasts, and/or additional tools and features. Sections related to Business, markets, and Economy contain the largest number of added features. Of special note to business users is the "Quotes" section, providing access to indexes, stock quotes, currencies, mutual funds and other information. Stock quotes and markets data are accessible from several places on WSJ.com, including from the “Search” function as well as markets data from the main navigation under the "Markets" section.
WSJ’s online content is generally available only to subscribers. WSJ has implemented a strict “paywall” that limits what nonsubscribers can view.3 Articles available exclusively to subscribers are signified by a ‘key’ icon next to the article: nonsubscribers can only view a few lines of the article’s content. Once a user is signed in, ‘keys’ do not appear. An examination of the categories of access (free vs. paid) in WSJ’s RSS feeds confirms that the majority of content offered through WSJ.com is available only to subscribers. "Lifestyle” and “Technology” articles appear to offer the most free content, while articles for Business, Market News, and US. and World News are primarily available only to subscribers.
Date Coverage
WSJ.com offers articles dating back to January 1, 1997. Content may be searched using Advanced search according to source type, prescribed date ranges, or custom date search.
WSJ's news article archive displays articles by published date extending back to approximately April 2011. It is unclear whether all articles published on a specific date are represented in this archive.
In Today's Paper offers a "digital replica" of the daily print edition of The Wall Street Journal (late edition, New York metropolitan area). This service allows users to view articles that were published in the print edition according to date, section, and page number. In Today's Paper "print edition" is available online for 90 days. However, it should be noted that the digital replica does not offer access to true page images other than an image of the section front page. Full-issue replicas ("e-reader" versions) are only available for the past 7 days via http://ereader.wsj.net/ .
Other Sources for Online Access to WSJ Content
Coverage of The Wall Street Journal via WSJ.com extends back to 1997 for articles. Factiva (another Dow Jones product) offers the WSJ full-text archive back to 1979. ABI/Inform (ProQuest) includes the text of Wall Street Journal articles from 1984 to the present.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal—1889-2000* offers full-text search and issue browsing of the digitized print edition from the paper's inception through 2000 (*Additional year of content added annually).