News Corp. chieftain Rupert Murdoch today confirmed that the Wall Street Journal web site is going all-free. This is great news, unless you run a financial blog or site."Instead of having one million (subscribers), (we'll have) at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth," Murdoch told shareholders gathered in Australia. Those subscribers fork over about $50 a year on average.
(Update 1/11/08: Looks like the chief had second thoughts. At least a bit more of the Journal is free.)
The Journal made premium content work. When I worked with the Hollywood Reporter's web site, we always debated the free model vs. "the Wall Street Journal model." Since The Reporter dispensed exclusive entertainment industry news to pros, the web site had long been financed by subscriber expense accounts. In 2006, the publisher made almost all content free, in a move that had all of us sweating. It worked out, more or less. In any case, it was clear this was the way things were going in web media economics.
The New York Times, as you probably recall, made the move last summer, killling off the hated Times Select, which firewalled columnists and the full archives.
My standard advice to writers remains to always read the New York Times. That's where the standards are set for news and feature writing. No other paper comes close. But taking a good look at the Journal's writing always pays off.
The Journal writers are great at serving sophisticated and relatively unsophisticated readers at the same time. No matter how complicated or obscure the topic, there's always some basic information in the story to orient baffled readers. The Journal team's great trick is to do this without talking up or down. A lot can be accomplished in the parenthetical.
Update 10/14: WSJ adds Digg buttons to some of its content.
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