The meme about the WSJ and its policy of charging for online content continues with this article by Wired -- Whither The Wall Street Journal? Some key points from the article (emphasis is mine):
Because the Journal sells more ads than it can possibly run, Dow Jones, the Journal's master, plunked down half-a-billion dollars in November for MarketWatch, which operates MarketWatch.com.Nevertheless, the Journal faces an intractable problem. Because you have to subscribe to access both current news articles and the archive, the Journal is leaving only a faint footprint in cyberspace. As with The New York Times, which insists that readers register to view news and pay $3 per article in the archive, the Journal barely shows up on Google or any other search engine. I googled "Enron" -- an issue the Journal covered exhaustively, and which two of its reporters even wrote a book about -- and not one article appeared within the first 25 pages (250 results.)
Then I rigged the test by plugging in "Wall Street Journal" and "Enron" and still struck out (although I did pull up a couple of Journal stories specially edited for high school classes.) If you can input the name of your publication into a search engine and not come up with any stories, you must be digitally tone-deaf.
And in the rare event a Wall Street Journal article does pop up and you click on the link, you will likely encounter a message that informs you, "The page you requested is available only to subscribers." To access the article would cost you $79 a year, or $7 a month ($39 a year if you also subscribe to the print edition).
Since most people refuse to pay for WSJ stories, most bloggers are reluctant to link to them. It also has an impact on anyone who uses the web for research -- and there are a lot of us. As importantly, the next generation of readers is growing up by accessing news over the internet, and one place they are not surfing to is WSJ.com. With their habits being formed now, there is little chance the Journal will become part of their lives, either now or in the future.
Yeah, I have to agree with some of Wired's analysis. Either the WSJ is ahead everyone else or anachronistically challenged. "Digitally tone-deaf" ... that's a neat way of putting it. I'll add that to my quiver of party catch phrases.
At once time, I subscribed to the printed version of the WSJ, but found the value of the information didn’t exceed the cost of the subscription. Employing my simple trading money management techniques, I got stopped out of the WSJ before it became a huge loss.
It seems like they should at least syndicate some free articles to places like Yahoo Finance like IBD does, but I never see any.
It seems clear to me that they should at the very least open up their archives. They have all that ad inventory yet (relatively) so few readers. The traffic from search engines alone should give them a nice boost in revenues.
I have subcribed to the WSJ print edition for several years. I really like the paper. I think it has first class articles and editorials. But, I have to admit, it chaps my hide to have to fork over an additional $39 per year just to access the internet version of their content. And, on top of that, if I want something over 30 days old, I have to pay for it. It seems like they could charge $39 per year for those who do not subscribe to the print edition and make online content free for those that do subscribe to the print edition.
Just my thoughts.
JLP
http://AllThingsFinancial.blogspot.com
I have subscribed for decades, and find both the web and print editions worthwhile. However, the Financial Times is now being distributed free of charge to students at the Economics Dept. of my son's college. I'm certain that this and other more aggressive approaches by competitors hurts the WSJ franchise in the long term.
Also, their editorial page was so blindly partisan for Bush in the election that I found it disgusting. The Economist is beating their pants off in more thoughtful business news.