This massive effort was directed by still another Ph.D. economist, Heinz E. Luedicke, who had been the commodities editor before the war. Luedicke wrote analyses of the regulations and their impact on business. He reported on the business reaction to the regulations, which was widely read in the capital.

After the war, Joseph Ridder, who had served as a member of the Navy's Price Renegotiation Board, turned control of the JoC over to his two sons, Ben and Eric. Both had served as Marine officers in the Pacific. Ben became publisher and appointed Luedicke as editor to succeed Bogen in 1947. Ben then became publisher of another Ridder paper, the San Jose Mercury-News. Eric, who had been the JoC's business manager, became publisher, a post he held until his retirement in 1985.

"Dewey Defeats Truman" proclaimed the famous Chicago Tribune headline the morning after President Harry Truman won re-election in 1948. The JoC made the same mistake. Its front page on Nov. 3, 1948, the morning after the election, contained eight articles discussing Thomas Dewey's election and what it would mean for the nation.

The Journal of Commerce concentrated its coverage on shipping, commodities, insurance, foreign trade, foreign exchange, banking, air cargo and domestic transportation. The paper dropped areas of coverage where there was significant competition, such as food, financial market coverage, and stock and bond tables.

The paper expanded in the international arena, especially in coverage of Japan and Germany, where it was developing a stream of advertising revenue as those countries rebuilt their industries and shipping. It launched an International Edition in 1949.

Meanwhile, a revolution was brewing in the maritime industry. In 1956, Malcom McLean introduced the first containerized ship. It signaled a tectonic shift in the way cargo would be shipped globally and triggered events that would change the industry and the paper that covered it.

The changes weren't apparent immediately. The Journal of Commerce had mentioned McLean's plans before the sailing of his first container ship from Port Newark, but it ignored the innovation for several weeks after the event. Much of the paper's maritime coverage during that period dealt with a feud between Brooklyn and Manhattan wings of the International Longshoremen's Association - a squabble that soon would be rendered meaningless by containerization's shift of cargo-handling away from older piers in New York. Soon, however, the JoC was on the forefront in coverage of containerized shipping, a position it continues to hold.

The JoC was written and edited with manual typewriters and pencils in 1952.

As publisher, Eric Ridder moved the paper into the newly emerging era of electronic publishing. In 1961, the JoC purchased the Commodity News Service and nurtured the fledgling wire service into a period of rapid growth. It was later to become the backbone of Knight-Ridder Financial News, a service designed for Wall Street commodity traders.