(or South Brunswick, or Monmouth Junction)
In hindsight, Dow Jones Chief People Officer Dianne DeSevo’s announcement on May 19 that the New Jersey campus of Dow Jones & Company would be closing to Dow Jones employees effective July 1 was not a huge surprise.
In a campus where Dow Jones employees used to fill all five buildings—six, if you count the printing plant which has been closed since 2010—where it once was difficult to find a seat in either of two cafeterias, and parking could be at a premium even with over 3,200 spaces on the property, remaining staff can now fit into one building. With plenty of room to spare.
When Dow Jones Global Real Estate informed employees in February of 2023 that “from time to time we engage property advisors to assess our portfolio of assets” and “in the coming weeks, you may see some visitors touring the facility,” the writing was on the wall. A few months later, staff were informed that Dow Jones intended to “explore all opportunities, commencing with testing the market.”
Two years later, the Kilgore Center, named for Bernard (Barney) Kilgore, legendary Managing Editor for The Wall Street Journal from 1941 until his death in 1967, will be “easier to market . . . for sale if it’s empty,” according to the email DeSevo wrote last month to Princeton staff.
Or is that South Brunswick staff? Or Monmouth Junction?
The suburban New Jersey campus sits on 206 acres of land in the township of South Brunswick, which is the location designation IAPE and Dow Jones veterans still use today, despite the results of a company contest conducted under former CEO Will Lewis, which caused the location to be formally renamed “Princeton.”
That the community of Monmouth Junction was also used as a mailing address added to the occasional location confusion.
But no more. Next week, Dow Jones employees and contractors assigned to the Princeton campus will begin sharing 100 desks at a temporary workspace in Lawrenceville, NJ, approximately 11 miles down US Route 1 from current offices. Dow Jones management says a new, permanent space will be finalized 18 to 24 months from now.
This week, employees are packing personal belongings and cleaning desks. Some are also sharing memories.
After all, this is the campus where WSJ staff set up shop in the aftermath of 9/11, making sure that the paper would indeed publish on September 12, 2001, an edition that earned a Pulitzer Prize. Several WSJ News departments—like the Global Copy Desk and WSJ Radio—would remain in South Brunswick until they ceased to exist.
It is the location that “employed” border collies to keep geese away from the helipad—now a basketball court—so helicopters carrying Dow Jones execs could take off and land safely when commuting back and forth to New York. South Brunswick employees would often joke that when the helicopters stopped arriving, even the dogs were laid off. It is where, one year in a gesture of post-holiday goodwill, management invited Dow Jones staff to take the poinsettias that decorated Building 5, only to later discover the plants hadn’t been purchased, but leased from a local florist.
It was an innovation hub, with its own engineering building supporting so many of the company’s proprietary products and where Dow Jones global operations were supported on a 24/7 basis from not one, but two technology command centers. It is where, from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, DowCom was the first-of-its-kind communication system for transmitting text to and from printing plants around the country, and where, in the early 1980s, Dow Jones became the first publisher to accomplish satellite transmission of news pages to remote printing plants.
Its 4.1 megawatt solar-power system, one of the largest at a commercial facility in the United States when it was built in 2011 remains the largest of any corporate office in New Jersey today.
It is where IAPE hosted some memorable contract bargaining rallies, with giant inflatable rats looming over Route 1 at the edge of the company’s property. Where IAPE representatives with bullhorns led pro-union chants and parades of picketing members through buildings and parking lots. It is where grievances were argued and arbitrated and contract agreements were hammered out.
It is where Dow Jones families brought their children to spend the workday at the on-site daycare facility. It is also where Dow Jones employees said goodbye to so many friends and colleagues; where over 1,000 IAPE-represented employees were based in the 1990s, when South Brunswick was the largest of any Dow Jones facilities. Today, that number is barely 400.
As the Columbia Journalism Review wrote in 2007, while looking back at the tenure of departing-CEO Peter Kann and the Dow Jones debacles that were Telerate and WBIS, “Walking through South Brunswick is like visiting the set of ‘The Omega Man,’ the 1971 Charlton Heston movie about the earth’s population being wiped out by biological weapons. The buildings are there, but all the people are gone.”
That wasn’t entirely true, as the 80 IAPE members in Princeton who have worked for Dow Jones since 2007, and earlier, can attest. The point, however, was clear: even then, the future of South Brunswick, or Princeton, was in doubt.
And so, as IAPE members and non-union staff prepare to leave these buildings, perhaps for the final time, we tip our hat to Princeton. Or South Brunswick. Or Monmouth Junction. You leaked when it rained. Sunshine through your windows was blinding. You had wildlife in your parking lot, from foxes to the occasional black bear. And you were the work home for so many.
You’ll be missed.
