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Online Wall Street Journal goes sub free
Murdoch hoping for readers "in every corner of the earth"...

By Greg Sandoval

Published: Wednesday 14 November 2007

Rupert Murdoch plans to give away the digital version of The Wall Street Journal for free, making News Corp the latest company to steer away from paid subscriptions.

Agenda Setters 2007 - Top 20

Find out who made it into silicon.com's Agenda Setters top 20 by clicking the links below…

1. Mark Zuckerberg
2. Steve Jobs
3. Eric Schmidt
4. John Chambers
5. Ashley Highfield
6. Nicholas Negroponte
7. Niklas Zennström
8. Diane Greene
9. Jonathan Ive
10.Viviane Reding
11.Paul Coby
12.Marc Benioff
13.Emily Bell
14.Larry Ellison
15.Jeff Bezos
16.Ben Verwaayen
17.Nandan Nilekani
18.David Yu
19.Satoru Iwata
20.Mark Hurd

Murdoch, quoted by the Associated Press (AP) as he spoke to a group of investors in Australia, said: "We are studying it and we expect to make that free." He said "instead of having one million [subscribers]", the company will receive readers "in every corner of the earth".

Murdoch is hoping a free model for WSJ.com - which recently announced it had topped the one-million-subscriber mark - will send readership skyrocketing and cause advertisers to flock to the site.

According to the AP, the WSJ's subscribers generated about $50m in annual revenue.

Few online services have made paid subscriptions successful but the WSJ was widely considered to be at the head of the pack. In September, The New York Times stopped trying to sell subscriptions to premium content.

Greg Sandoval writes for CNET News.com