WSJ.com introduces premium paid content model

by Staff, Brand Republic 22-Oct-09, 10:55

NEW YORK - In the search for avenues of paid content the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal is introducing an almost $600 a year Wall Street Journal Professional Edition.

The WSJ.com Professional Edition is aimed at business readers looking for more detailed information than is available on the paper's website, which will be combined with Dow Jones Newswires and news archive Factiva and other sources.

The service will cost $49 a month and has been under discussion for much of the year. Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp, publishes the Journal and owns Dow Jones Newswires and the Factiva news database.

The new service is one of the company's first efforts to blend these products, which have largely been aimed at different audiences.

The product is part of a flurry of efforts by news organizations to earn more revenue from their online offerings amid the wide availability of free news on the Internet. Walt Disney Co's ESPN.com and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper are among the many other enterprises that have sought to offer niche or in-depth information and charge for it.

WSJ Professional allows users to set up the Web site with custom feeds of news, information and alerts for the markets and industry sectors they care most about, as well as to access the regular content on WSJ.com.

Dow Jones editors will select news stories and information to help WSJ Professional users dig deeper into topics of interest.

Although Dow Jones plans to charge business users $49 a month, compared to $151 a year for the WSJ.com or $12 a month, but it will also be available on a site licence basis with cheaper deals for businesses buying multiple licences.

Earlier this week Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, said the company would increase revenue from charging content aggregators and users as it reduced its dependence on ad revenue.

He also dismissed those who are sceptical that consumers would be reluctant to pay for content.

That reluctance was highlighted again in fresh research this week, from Lightspeed Research, that said Nine out of ten UK consumers would never pay for news stories online no matter how cheap.

The study of 2,000 UK consumers challenges Murdoch's decision to charge users to access the websites of The Sun, The Times and Sky News.

It found that 91% of UK consumers would be unwilling to pay for news online and 90% would be unwilling to pay for news analysis.

Earlier this month News International launched a new membership scheme called Times+ for readers of The Times and The Sunday Times.

Membership of Times+ will give readers access to events, gifts and rewards, and is free to subscribers of The Times and The Sunday Times, or is available to non-subscribers for £50 a year.