Free the News

According to an article published by the Freepress, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said he “intends to make access to The Wall Street Journals’ Web site free trading subscription fees for anticipated ad revenue.” News Corp. has signed an agreement to acquire Dow Jones & Co., and Murdoch believes that:

A free model, with increased readership for wsj.com, will attract large numbers of big-spending advertisers.

The Web site, which is one of the few news sites around the world to successfully introduce a subscription model, has around 1 million subscribers generating about $50 million in user fees. After conducting several studies Murdoch expects that by making the Web site free they will have at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth.

True, wsj.com was a very successful subscription Web site, but why stop there if there is the possibility for even more success, not to mention revenue. I for one don’t want to have to pay for my new. It’s my news so let me have it. The fact that the wsj.com was a subscription Web site actually turned me off from The Wall Street Journal all together. There are thousands of other places that I could get the exact same news, for free, so of course I went other places and I have a feeling that advertisers had the same mentality.