News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday he intends to make access to The Wall Street Journal's Web site free, trading subscription fees for anticipated ad revenue.
"We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million (subscribers), having at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth," Murdoch said.
News Corp. has signed an agreement to acquire Dow Jones & Co., and the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. A special shareholders meeting is scheduled for Dec. 13 in New York.
Murdoch said he believes that a free model, with increased readership for wsj.com, will attract "large numbers" of big-spending advertisers.
The Web site, one of the few news sites globally to successfully introduce a subscription model, currently has around 1 million subscribers, which generates about $50 million in user fees.
When the NYT dropped the paywall on its website, I had a question: "Et tu, globeandmail.com?"
From an Oct. 30 online q-and-a with Edward Greenspon, editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail:
J.D.M. Stewart, Toronto: Good morning, Ed.
What are your thoughts on opening up the Web content of The Globe and Mail, following the lead of The New York Times, a paper that has done this just recently.
I have already been able to use their articles in teaching American history, so perhaps I am developing future readers of that paper while doing so.
I am sure Globe stories would be used a lot, too, if back-issue content was made available free on the Web. It might create new readers.
Is this under consideration at all?
Evelyn Malowany, Montreal: The Toronto Star and The New York Times are free to me online. Why is your newspaper not free to me online? Thank you.
Edward Greenspon: Good morning to both of you. A timely question, for sure, and one we've been discussing internally over many, many months.
More than 90 per cent of our journalistic material currently is free online. But many of our columnists are behind a pay wall as is most of our archived material.
I don't want to get in front of ourselves here, but I would keep my eyes out on this front if I were you. I suspect you will be pleased.