Murdoch: WSJ.com to Become Free, Ad-Based Site

Nov. 13, 2007 12:39 PM ETNWS, DJ4 Comments

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News Corp. (NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch Monday said he expects to convert WSJ.com, which is now a subscription site, to a free ad-supported model. News Corp. is nearing completion of its pending acquisition of Dow Jones (DJ), parent of the WSJ.com, the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s.

“We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having 1 million (subscribers) having at least 10-15 million in every corner of the earth,” he told a shareholder meeting yesterday in Adelaide, Australia, according to Reuters.

Murdoch also said the company was off to a strong start to its fiscal second quarter ending December, with the global credit market squeeze so far not having much impact on advertising.

No word from Rupert on whether he also plans to change the subscription model for Barrons.com.

News Corp. Tuesday is up 44 cents, or 2%, at $21.78.

Disclosure: Author owns shares in DJ

This article was written by

Eric Savitz

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Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written from Palo Alto, California by long-time Barron's West Coast Editor Eric J. Savitz. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Eric joined Barron's as a feature writer in New York in 1988, after four years at the Dow Jones news wires. In 1995, he moved to California as the magazine's first reporter in Silicon Valley, creating the Plugged In column. Eric left Barron's in 1998 to become executive editor of The Industry Standard. He rejoined Barron's in Palo Alto in late 2001. Eric also writes the monthly Tech File column for Smart Money magazine. Visit Tech Trader Daily (http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/) and Barron's Online (http://online.barrons.com/).

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