Wall Street Journal

“”If I were to create a list of questions to ask potential managers of my money, one of them would be: “Do you read the WSJ OpEds?” If the answer were yes, I would not walk but run in the opposite direction.

—Barry Ritholtz[1]

The Wall Street Journal (abbr. WSJ) is an esteemed, respected American newspaper (ha!) owned by the Dow Jones Corporation, which focuses on business and financial market news. The tone is dry and respectful, and they don't have a comics page (possibly because the op-eds are enough of a joke already).

Anyone interested in economics has pretty much given up on WSJ. They used to have a decent mix of free and paid content, but now even the real-time economics blog is paid.

General decline[edit]

Since Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the WSJ in 2007, many to the left of wingnut have noticed its declining editorial standards:

• One example of them failing at basic statistics
• Another example of them being unable to fact-check^{[note 1]}
• The middle class: where you earn a minimum $15,000 a month!
• In defense of — wait for it — land mines!
• Egypt needs a Pinochet!
• Dear Israel: Violate the Geneva Conventions!
• Something something Kristallnacht. What better way to celebrate your 125th anniversary than by raising Mike Godwin from the dead?
• And did we forget the global warming denialism?^[3]
• Eric Metaxas wow his readers into an euphoric feeling of goddidit
• Transgenderism: a mental disorder. It goes without saying that Paul McHugh is not an authority on the subject of trans people and greatly misinterprets the study he quotes.
• Making Money is a Patriotic Act "The two of us are quite rich. We have earned more money than we could have imagined and more than we can spend on ourselves, our children and grandchildren. These days getting rich off a profitable business is regarded as almost sinister. But we have nothing to apologize for, and we don’t think the government should have more of our profits."
• Replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket! Wait, really? They took my advice? Nevermind that, then!

The pandering has (predictably) made the comments section hilariously wingnutty and should be avoided at all costs.

On the other hand, the journalism and opinion sides are known to have a strict firewall. Murdoch had invested $125 million in Theranos, and an opinion writer had written a fawning portrayal of the founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes. When Holmes found out that one of their reporters was doing the long-overdue reporting that would expose her and her company as a complete fraud which was endangering people's lives, she tried to pressure Murdoch into killing the story. Murdoch refused to do so, and the resulting stories definitively proved that Theranos was an outright scam and made it clear that Holmes was a massive con artist; she ultimately ended up convicted and sentenced to prison. So there's that.^[4]

Noted writers[edit]

Former or current opinion contributors and journalists for the Wall Street Journal that stand out for some reason or another.

Racialist letter signatories[edit]

"Mainstream Science on Intelligence," a public letter that defended The Bell Curve, received publication in the Wall Street Journal on December 13, 1994. It had 52 signatories. Some are listed below.

See also[edit]

• Investor's Business Daily, its nuttier younger brother.
• The National Post, its Canadian cousin.
• The New York Times, its less conservative neighbor.

External links[edit]

• Gawker.com: archive.is, web.archive.org — A tale of two newspapers.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]