As many of you have noticed, the Sy Syms School of Business Student Association is providing free copies of The Wall Street Journal. At The Exchange, we believe that it is advantageous to understand The Wall Street Journal and its layout. The WSJ is divided into three main sections, the First Section, Marketplace, and Money and Investing, which appear every day in that respective order. The Weekend Section appears in the Friday's edition of The Journal. Generally, the paper includes a special section that focuses on current financial and business topics, which is usually released with Monday's paper.

The First Section can really be divided into two parts, the Front Page and the remainder of the First Section. The Front Page is segmented into six columns starting from right to left and ascending in order from one through six. Columns one and six are labeled "The Leders" by The WSJ staff, which are used by the staff to break their top stories. The WSJ uses The Leders "to break news, identify trends, or analyze major trends."

The first column generally contains a story on a wide range of economic and financial topics, while the sixth column is used exclusively to report the day's top business story, and the second and third columns are found under the heading "What's News." The second column has a sub heading of "Business and Finance," where The WSJ's staff provides the top business, finance, and economic news for the day. The third column has a sub-heading of "World-Wide," and it reports the latest news and headlines from around the globe. The "A-hed" is found in the fourth column, which is used to provide the staff reporters an opportunity to relate on any topic or subject imaginable. The "A-hed" is used to inform the public of other important news, without focusing on finance or business headlines. The Performance Graph is placed directly above the "A-hed" article in the fourth column, and frequently depicts major economic data.

Finally, the fifth column rotates on a daily basis to give readers an inside look into the different sectors of the economy. On Mondays the fifth column presents "The Outlook," which reports on world-wide markets and economies. For Tuesdays, the column is devoted to careers, and the heading is "Work Week." Wednesday's column is entitled "Tax Report," and reports on the latest news in tax legislation, opinions and reports. On Thursdays, the column is called "Business Bulletin," and it focuses on the latest trends and news in the business world. Lastly, on Friday, the staff of The WSJ presents the latest news from Washington entitled "Washington Wire." Notably, these are the general guidelines for the fifth column, yet they are subject to change.

In the next edition of The Exchange, I will continue to describe the rest of the First Section and the remainder of the paper. For additional information and the website that I consulted in writing this article, go to http://info.wsj.com, and click on the "tour" link in the middle of the page.