Free Wall Street Journal. Mostly.
Thursday, January 24th, 2008;
-- Jordan McCollum |
If rumors are to be believed, the Wall Street Journal has been considering abandoning the subscription model for months. But alas, it’s not to be. Rupert Murdoch announced today that the Wall Street Journal, while expanding its free offerings, would not leave the subscription model. In fact, he stated that:
We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering (for subscribers) … The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive.
The site will continue to operate on a hybrid of advertising and subscription dollars. This decision could be due, at least in part, to reasons cited by estimates earlier this month that the Journal would need twelve times the traffic to break even on impression-based banner advertising if they abandoned the subscription based model altogether.
But will their new model—which will be “probably more expensive” to subscribers while offering more free content—pan out?
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January 24th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
It’s a good move by the WSJ. The NY Times saw a huge jump in online traffic when they opened up.
GL
January 25th, 2008 at 11:37 am
I was hoping they’d go more free, but I can’t blame them for holding onto the subscription model. Jordan I think you’re right that this decision came after Rupert Murdoch saw the numbers and realized how much more traffic he needed.
It’s still more free content for us so it’s hard to complain.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Yeah I couldn’t see them getting rid of their subscription model. I’ve read many articles about local newspapers losing big because everything their paper offers is free via the Internet. If they know they can’t break even without it then getting rid of it would be quite silly.
Expanding their free services is a great way to bump up impressions but they’ll need to make sure their paying clients get the good stock information
January 28th, 2008 at 6:04 am
[...] with newer social media outlets. The Atlantic Monthly, a political and cultural mainstay, and the Wall Street Journal announced they will follow suit, and make all or most of their content free to Internet [...]
August 15th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Now you can read WSJ for free!! Try it out: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~panjiabe/?page_id=21