The Wall Street Journal Edges Towards Free
Erick Schonfeld
24 comments »
In a concession to increased competition from the blogosphere and other newspapers throwing in the towel on paid-subscription walls for online content, the Wall Street Journal is making its opinion pages and commentary free. Does that mean the rest of the paper will soon be free online as well? It is certainly in keeping with new owner Rupert Murdoch’s previous public statements to that effect.
But the resistance within the Journal to completely opening up is still strong. Even as part of this announcement, the editors caution, “It’s as close as we’ll get to conceding there is such a thing as a free lunch.” You can read that to mean, don’t expect the rest of the paper to go free anytime soon. And a couple days ago, Henry Blodget made a strong case for why the Journal’s Website might end up keeping its paid wall: it makes money now ($75 million), it keeps print subscribers paying, and it generates higher online ad rates by attracting a more affluent audience.
All good points that have been trotted out by the defenders of print media in the past (i.e., the print media executives who don’t want to give up the lucrative model that they understand for a nebulous one that they don’t). Even so, it is not clear that Murdoch is convinced of these arguments. And his opinion is the only when that counts in this debate.
By opening the door a little bit with the opinion pages, the Wall Street Journal will be operating two different business models side by side. You can be sure that if the free portion outperforms the paid portion, there will be a lot of pressure to open up the news sections as well. Interestingly, when the New York Times tried the same bifurcated model it chose to make its news free and its opinion columnists were supposed to be the big draw for the online subscription service. So are people more willing to pay for opinion or for news? The answer is neither. We all know how the Times‘ experiment worked out. It is now completely free.
As more and more readers move online, they will expect their news to be free and ad-supported, as it is today on 99 percent of the Web. Even the Wall Street Journal cannot fight market forces and consumer preference forever.
Cool story,
I hope some of their articles would be free without “US” bloggers world wouldn’t develop as it’s developing now.
I thought the opinion pages and commentary already were free.
If the site opens its doors completely, I will consider reading them. I only pay for news, if it is free
Whoopee, free access to the editorial content of the WSJ! Just last week they ran an op-ed column where the writer claimed that the only people without health care are young people who don’t think they need it. If you like the governing style of Louis XIV, you’ll love the Wall Street Journal’s political views.
Short footnote: sad to say, the New York Times website is not *completely* free. There’s still a charge if you want access to the crossword puzzles.
I must admit I get free WSJ news everyday online, my school provides them to me for free. And I got the schools login
But on the other hand I must admit that WSJ is pricey
Who needs the Journal, we have TechCrunch and that’s all the news anyone will ever need, lol!!! Actually, the only reason I found out about TC was because of the write up in the Journal!!!!!
just like every other news paper in the new economy. How do charge for information, every article in the wall gets covered on 100k sites. Actually by the time it hits the news stand its antiquated.
Oh great, now we can all enjoy the WSJ’s unabashedly right wing editorial content. It’s a completely unbearable part of the paper.
Woohoo. Yippee.
My WSJ subscription ended in December and I didn’t renew it in fear that they would go free. Until I know one way or the other I’m not going to renew my subscription. They need to make a clear decision on this. I’m sure other subscribers are feeling the same way. I’m not going to throw a $100 in the trash.
I hope they keep it paid. If it’s free it will be tempting to dumb down the content to maximize revenue. Under the paid subscription model, the higher quality content should bring in more subscribers that want more than an online McPaper. Think of it as Costco vs. Walmart.
As much I like TC, sometimes your editorial is insanely amateurish.. why cant you cross-check if the hrefs (links) are working fine? that busy, or that lazy?
In this case: link missing for “Rupert Murdoch’s previous public statements to that effect”
If people think sites, even sites with a large user base, can operate in the real world FREE for very long they’re all smokin reefer. Advertising cannot support every website in existence. Get Real.
The opinion pages have always been free (unlike the NYT). Only exception was the “political diary”, no idea if that has been changed now. The layout was changed, however, and it seems the opinion pages are now more integrated with the news.
It’s about time they came to their senses. I’d never pay to read their articles although I must admit I do occassionally get to read some quality articles in the ‘Urinal when a hotel provides it.
Take for example Classmates.com. If they’d followed an ad-supported format instead of that ridiculous pay format, they’d be as big as MySpace or Facebook today.
http://www.RSSLiveTV.com
Free content will drive advertisers prices up on the site, which will make up for costs of running and labor costs. I think its a great move, no one should pay for content. I think if advertisements can’t support a site, even a large site with a large base, then businesses and individuals should take the loss. They instead should use their websites to drive their own business offline and/or have their website (or blog) create exposure. Not every website main purpose is to make money off of it.
I think it need to be a free a long time ago. Bloomberg offers free news and resources related to market activity.
I think they need to decide soon. I subscribed for years, and let it lapse when Murdoch bought it assuming it would soon be free. If it’s not going to be for at least a year, I’ll sign up again, but until then…
Doesn’t everyone by now know that the WSJ is easily hacked using Firefox and an extension called firebug? If you know how, all WSJ content is free.
what took them so long ?
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http://www.xencasino.com
This is something I wrote about back in September 2006.
So-called “dead tree” media isn’t a sustainable business model, and it’s a business model that looks curiously lost on the internet…
I have been following their Business Technology blog.
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/
Perhaps the expanded visitor commentary will complement their traditional editorial on this and other topics of interest to the executive level readership.
The need for the improved alignment of enterprise technology investments and business strategy execution is clearly a hot topic. However, if executive readers are only exposed to the WSJ staff editor perspective, then the analysis tends to be slanted towards the one or two sources that were used to build the storyline for the article.
In contrast, by allowing informed commentary to coexist with the WSJ editorial the readers will be able to benefit from a broader spectrum of market insights. IMHO, this is notable progress that should benefit both the Journal and its readers.