WSJ.com Gives a Free Peek

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has publicly expressed the possibility that the online version of The Wall Street Journal could offer the online public its content for free.  As it stands, a year’s subscription to WSJ.com costs $79, while a dual subscription to both the site and the print version costs $99 for a year.

Last Thursday was the first time that the newspaper giant’s Web site actually made a tangible step towards this proposed end. Both the American and European editions of the opinion/editorial section on WSJ.com were made available to the online public for free. While the columns in the section are peripheral to the main bulk of the Journal’s content, this move was, at the very least, an indication that Murdoch’s hint at a free Web site could very well be substantiated in the coming months.

WSJ.com is also posting clips from Fox News, which is also another piece of media property in Murdoch’s stable. This move hints at further content sharing between the Journal and the emergent Fox Business News.

The desire that Murdoch has to make all of the Journal’s online content available for free follows a trend that most major newspaper publications have shifted to on the Web. The financial logic behind it relies upon the prospect of increased readership, which will ideally bring in sufficient online ad revenues.

There is still some apprehension with the financial sense that these moves make. Spencer Wang at Bear Stearns, for instance, estimates that WSJ.com must draw an online audience 12 times its current one in order to match the subscription revenues that would be lost.

While traditional newspapers continue to exhibit symptoms of extinction, there are some that are making strong headway online.

Source:
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