Rupert Murdoch announces charges for mobile Wall Street Journal reading
Rupert Murdoch marches on in his crusade to charge for content. Murdoch has lately announced that the Blackberry and iPhone Wall Street Journal readers, currently free, will soon begin charging for access. The fee is to be $2 per week for those who do not subscribe to the Journal at all, $1 per week for print or on-line subscribers, and free to those who subscribe to both the print and on-line editions.
It is tempting to shake my head sadly at Murdoch’s apparent drive to strip away all relevance from his paper. But on the other hand, the Journal is one of few papers that has been successful at charging for web content—and the Journal’s target audience will generally have extra money to burn. So who knows?
And Murdoch may not stop with this paper. At the event where he announced the Journal charges, he “added that the company was mulling options such as subscriptions and pay-per-view for Hulu”.
Sheesh.
September 16th, 2009 at 5:58 am
The WSJ is my favorite daily news paper. I read it just as frequently as the NYT but that will change if I can’t access content for free. There are too many ways to access free content. It just doesn’t makes sense. Same goes for Hulu. As it stands, I prefer to download TV shows so as to have no interruptions from poor streaming speeds when my internet is bogged down. Downloading, while not on the up-and-up, is fast and more convenient than Hulu. Charging for online video would be a bad idea. Downloads and illegal streaming sites are simply too ubiquitous.
Here’s a question, though: will WSJ just be charging to access articles through the application or on their mobile site as well? I’ll gladly browse to their mobile site if that’s what it takes to read the paper.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:31 am
How does charging for content indicate a drive to “strip away all relevance from his paper”?
September 16th, 2009 at 11:38 am
By charging for content, he will be driving readers away to other papers. With every reader it loses, the paper becomes that much less relevant.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:35 am
FYI: There is a widely known loophole for accessing the restricted content at the Wall Street Journal website. The circumvention strategy is explained in a recent article at the Atlantic website titled “Murdoch’s Plan to Charge for Online News Doomed?”: