Wall Street Journal blends a new flavour
Jinfo Blog

21st October 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

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On October 21 Dow Jones & Co announced another subscription option for Wall Street Journal readers - the "Wall Street Journal Professional Edition." (http://digbig.com/5bamfg) The new subscription service melds content from the WSJ.com web site with information from the Dow Jones' business to business news services and online databases. It marks the first time that the content of these two platforms, traditionally aimed at different users, will be blended together as a new subscription product. According to the press release, "The targeted users are businesses and individuals who need more specialized information about energy or corporate bonds, for example, than is available from WSJ.com, but aren't the large companies targeted for costlier services by Dow Jones Newswires or Bloomberg L.P. of another News Corporation property." (http://digbig.com/5bamfe) Pricing is expected to be $49/month for single users, with site licenses available for corporate subscriptions. That's about 4 times the monthly cost of a regular WSJ online subscription, but as the press release points out, the new product will add to the WSJ's daily offering things like a one-year archive of Factiva's global business sources and a two-year archive of wsj.com content, more than 30 industry pages, managed by Dow Jones editors, six industry sections managed by Journal editors, and a customised home page. The news reflects not only an "it's about time" strategy of bringing together data sources from throughout the broad News Corp. portfolio, but also another experiment in News Corp. monetizing its content. This comes on the heels of a September 17th announcement (http://digbig.com/5bamfh) that beginning October 24, mobile readers of the WSJ will have to start paying for the content that has heretofore been free - as reported here in April (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e18767). It appears the free content giveaway is drying up a News Corp. though if you act quickly you can extend your free mobile access for at least a little while: "As a special promotion, both current WSJ Mobile Reader users and new users who register prior to Oct. 24 will receive a 90-day extension before a mobile subscription is required."

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