MarketWatch

• 1. Introduction

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  MarketWatch is a financial news and stock market data website. Today it sits inside Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp, alongside The Wall Street Journal and Barron's. Getting from a standalone site to that shelf took a stock market debut, a change of owners, and a shift in business model. It also took more than one change in the editor's chair. This is the story of how MarketWatch got there, and who steered it along the way.

• 2. A Risky Public Debut

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  In January 1999, during the dot-com bubble, the company went public through an initial public offering. Shares priced at $17 apiece, then climbed as high as $130 on the very first day of trading. That single-day surge pushed the company's market capitalization above $1 billion, even though annual revenue totaled only $7 million.

  In June 2000, the company formed a joint venture with the Financial Times, naming Peter Bale as managing editor. That alliance placed MarketWatch beside an established financial newspaper, years before its own future owner would enter the picture.

• 3. A Joint Venture Begins

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  In the fall of 1995, Data Broadcasting Corporation conceived the project under the working title DBC Online. The marketwatch.com domain itself was not registered until the 30th of July 1997. The site finally launched on the 30th of October 1997, as a 50/50 joint venture between DBC and CBS News.

  Larry Kramer ran the venture, working alongside co-founder and chairman Derek Reisfield. Thom Calandra served as the site's first editor-in-chief. That launch made MarketWatch a joint bet by a data company and a broadcast newsroom, a combination the marketplace would soon test.

• 4. Ownership Changes

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  In January 2005, Dow Jones & Company acquired the company for $528 million, or $18 per share. That deal folded MarketWatch's ownership into a media company that would keep making decisions about its editors and its business model for years afterward.

• 5. Editors In And Out

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  The company hired David Callaway in 1999, and by 2003 he had risen to editor-in-chief. Thom Calandra, the site's founding editor-in-chief, resigned in January 2004 amid allegations of insider trading. MarketWatch hired Dan Shar as general manager in May 2016. The role of editor in chief itself would change hands again, years after Shar's arrival, under different circumstances entirely.

• 6. Turning To Subscriptions

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  In October 2020, MarketWatch announced that it would become a paywalled, subscription-based publication. The company explained the shift as an effort to "raise the ambitions of our journalism." Mark DeCambre was named editor in chief on the 21st of March 2022. He took charge of a newsroom now built around reader subscriptions rather than free access.