There have been several stories this week that News Corp. might make WSJ.com a free site. Presently readers must pay a hefty subscription fee for the site. I have read that WSJ.com brings in over $65 million per year in subscription fees.

I questioned the Dow Jones decision to make WSJ.com a paid site back in 1998. Note too one of my many blog postings on this subject. My main point has been that a paid WSJ.com eliminated millions of readers from around the world who either could not afford the annual subscription fee or who refused to pay a fee.

Now Rupert Murdoch, the new owner, seems to be agreeing with these thoughts. The 19 September issue of the Wall Street Journal reported the following quote from Rupert Murdoch: "Would you lose $50 million in revenue? I don't think so....But you would lose some tens of millions to start with. Then, if the site is good, I think you'd get much more than that back just in textual search. And I think you'd get not one million paying customers, but around the world, you'd get 10 to 15 million regular hits on it, and that would be the most affluent, the most influential people in the world...And I think that would grow."

It has taken a few years, but I am pleased to see that someone like Rupert Murdoch understands my point of view. I always considered the Dow Jones position on a pure paid model to be ridiculous and basically anti-Internet. It appears Dow Jones, under new ownership, is finally entering the Internet age!