Neil Budde was the founder of the Wall Street Journal Online in 1995 — and is now the editor in chief at Yahoo News. I’m dying to hear his opinion on the question of what would happen if News Corp. were to drop the longest standing and most notable of the newspaper cost-walls.
“Budde and his team recognized that the Internet offered a better technology platform for achieving their goals. Work switched to the Internet in early 1995, and the team launched its first site – Money & Investing Update – in July of that year. In April 1996, the team rolled out the full Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition and stunned many observers by announcing that it would soon begin charging for access to the site. It stuck with that business model through the Internet bubble and steadily grew the subscriber base as well as advertising revenue, achieving a cash-flow-positive status in late 2002.”
I have read that dow jones has agreement with congoo.com, lexisnexis and factiva which prohibit them from taking down their pay wall or making the majority of their content free. These agreement do not lapse for another 8 months. So I dont think they will without having to pay some big damages to those companies.
It wouldn’t be an overnight — there are a lot of subscriptions to work through, the issue is how to take care of renewals until the biz dev and partnership agreements expire.
If the crossover economics worked, News Corp. could write a check to buy its way out from underneath.
Me, I predict it stays paid. That’s what Marketwatch was for — to deliver ad impressions