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Wsj Vet Dont Explain Away Our Online Success

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Mar 23 2009 11:25am EDT

'WSJ' Vet: Don't Explain Away Our Online Success

Former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Bill Grueskin sounds a little bit annoyed that keep people trying to belittle The Wall Street Journal's accomplishment of getting consumers to pay for news online by reducing it to some peculiarity of the Journal's audience or claiming that it represents some sort of devil's bargain.

Guest-blogging at Reflections of a Newsosaur, Grueskin knocks down several "myths" about the paper's pay model: that most readers expense subscriptions to their employers; that the Journal loses money on web subscriptions once acquisition costs are factored in; that the paper has sacrificed authority and relevance by disappearing behind a pay wall; and that the nature of the Journal's mission somehow makes it uniquely able to charge for content. Of the latter claim, he says, "[I]f financial sites are such easy marks for subscribers, why are Fortune, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CNNMoney and even Bloomberg all free online?". □

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