Barron's flourished under the direction of Robert M. Bleiberg.
He served as editor for 27 years, from 1954-81. In that time, the weekly's circulation grew fivefold to 300,000. As editor, Mr. Bleiberg read all the copy and wrote a weekly column, which he continued until he retired in 1991.
In total, he spent 45 years at the publication, having joined in 1946 after serving in World War II, during which he was wounded at Okinawa.
In 1980, he was named vice president of the Dow Jones magazine group and also publisher of Barron's.
He was known for supporting a free-market philosophy, one that was cultivated, to some extent, by his encounter with Alan Greenspan and a number of other free-market proponents in 1961.
Mr. Bleiberg reprinted some of Mr. Greenspan's writings after attending a lecture given by the future chairman of the Federal Reserve. Like Mr. Greenspan, an ardent follower of novelist Ayn Rand, Mr. Bleiberg was "persuaded of Rand's rightness," according to a 1995 article in Worth magazine.
But he refused to become more closely aligned with the group of Rand followers, known as the Collective. "It became evident to me that they were a cult or that there was a cultlike atmosphere about them," he said in Worth.
Mr. Bleiberg strongly believed business journalists should pursue a business degree. "To be equipped, to call yourself a business or financial journalist, you should have taken courses in security analysis," he said in the dinner journal commemorating the 50th anniversary of the New York Financial Writers' Association in 1988.
He received the Elliott V. Bell Award in 1985. Mr. Bleiberg died in 1997 at 73.