WSJ. - Initial Release

Initial Release

The magazine was originally sent as an insert with September 6, 2008 weekend home delivery in the seventeen largest United States The Wall Street Journal subscription markets as well as the September 5 editions of the Wall Street Journal Europe and Wall Street Journal Asia. By selecting these markets, it began with a readership of 960,000 (800,000 domestic). The magazine is also available with newsstand purchases of the newspaper in the selected domestic markets, and its content is available for free online at www.wsj.com. In addition, this readership has greater wealth (average household assets of US$2.9 million), higher income ($265,000 per-household income), and takes more than twice as many international leisure trips than the readership of the newspaper. This is notable because the readership of the newspaper spent more on women's apparel than the readers of Vogue and more on leisure travel than the readers of Travel & Leisure. The launch press release was sent in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. The September 6 debut had been announced nearly a year earlier.

The magazine was officially unveiled at the Pierpont Morgan Library on September 3, 2008. The unveiling was led by Ellen Asmodeo-Giglio, its publisher; Michael Rooney, Dow Jones chief revenue officer; Tina Gaudoin, WSJ. editor in chief (and former launch editor of The Times of London’s Luxx); and Robert J. Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. It has been compared to How To Spend It, the weekend magazine of the Financial Times, T magazine, a New York Times offshoot, Style & Design, a spinoff of Time, and Departures, a magazine distributed for free to American Express platinum and black cardholders. Gaudoin had also previously worked for Tatler, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and helped to launch the women's magazine Frank.