Mobile News from Wall Street Journal No Longer Free

17th September, 2009 by caitas
Tags: , ,

News chief Rupert Murdoch from the Wall Street Journal announced today that in less than two months time it will oblige the users of the journal`s mobile version to pay a fee for this opportunity.

Even though the organization allowed people to use the mobile service news for free, the new strategy of the news company is to charge $2 per week for people who wish to enjoy this commodity, but are not subscribed to the printed version of the magazine. The offer differs for those customers who have a subscription either to the printed version of the journal or for the online one, meaning that they will be charged at a half price for their mobile access.

The persons who have subscriptions to both Internet and printed version of the news magazine will not pay anything for the mobile access; they will get it for free.

The news company did not specifically state when this action is going to be taken and whether the charging will commence at the same time for all formats of delivery, but it seems that the version supported by both iPod`s applications and BlackBerry will be the first variants subject to a fee. Even if the Wall Street Journal always speculated about the fact that the iPod version will not be for free, nothing official has been announced until this day. To support the change in strategy and the charging of a fee, Mr. Rupert Murdoch stated that in order to generate more revenues the company had to do this. Even if the free version also gained profits for the company thanks to the online ads that were featured between the news, the organization now feels the need to exploit the mobile opportunities that emerge.

Taking into consideration that in recent years many companies faced great problems and even went bankrupt because the revenues coming from online advertising were not enough to cover the production expenses of the newspapers or the various costs involved in their distribution, administration and so on and so forth, one may consider that Wall Street Journal is a real success because it manages to keep its users and even gain new subscribers to the services it offers, regardless of the form they come in, printed or virtual. However, there are examples of news magazines such as the New York Times that do not charge money for the mobile version of the paper and still are successful.

Hearst and other big publishers developed the idea of Wall Street Journal even further and created an e-book version of their papers. Thus, they managed to attract e-book readers which pay a certain subscription fee and receive their news magazine online.


  • Share

 

Readers Comments