Paid Content – Yeah, The WSJ Does It

Mar 23, 2009 by winjaw

And currently has 1.1 million paid subscribers.

Yep, the Wall Street Journal charges for its online subscription. God forbid.

There’s a lot of pontificating from “experts” who think all content should be free and who have  A). Never run a newspaper or been in a newsroom and B). Think the majority of “old media” don’t get “new media” and need to get out of the way. – The first point is self-explanatory. I’ll deal with the second in another post.

But Alan Mutter – Reflections of a Newsosaur - went straight to the source. He’s got a guest blog from Bill Grueskin, the former managing editor of WSJ.Com. This is what we call a guy who knows what he’s talking about and why. It’s actually two posts: first was today, second comes tomorrow. It’s very insightful. Read it.

Probably the greatest “paid content” quote ever – At the class, I turned to my co-instructor, Peter Kann, former CEO of Dow Jones and the person ultimately responsible for the paid strategy.
“I made the site paid because I was ignorant, “ Kann told the class. “I didn’t know any better. I just thought people should pay for content.”

Sometimes the simplest way is the best way.