So, all of 170 out of the Wall Street Journal’s 1.7 million subscribers terminated their subscription as a result of Rupert Murdoch’s successful bid to acquire the WSJ?
What the heck. Felix Salmon makes a good case that Murdoch should turn the WSJ into a free service:
The potential readership of the WSJ . . . is enormous. Right now, there is no one-stop-shop on the World Wide Web for comprehensive, global businesss and finance news and analysis. A free WSJ.com would overnight become the global authority on such matters. WSJ.com is never going to make much money selling subscriptions in India or Brazil or Russia or even Mexico ñ but if it became a regular read among the business classes in those countries, local ad reps could make a fortune for News Corp. (Technology nowadays makes it very easy to target ads to readers in specific countries.)
The reason I’m hopeful about Murdoch buying the WSJ is that Murdoch has a truly global outlook, while the WSJ has always seemed to be a bit on the parochial side. And no one with a global outlook thinks that trying to sell subscriptions to WSJ.com makes any sense. Free is clearly the way to go.
That’s an interesting point about Murdoch’s global outlook.
I’m hopeful that over time, the WSJ’s international coverage in general improves. The Financial Times, for example, is a wonderful source for international news (not just international business news). The WSJ is not even close, but I think with Murdoch at the helm, maybe it could be.