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SDRNews: The Wallstreet Journal Is Special

September 15th, 2009 Administrator

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Wall Street Journal is Special

by Andrew McCaskey
Really Special

NewsCorp execs might want to exercise some caution as they extend their Wall Street Journal experience into other online media. Rupert Murdoch has been very clear – he intends to charge for every bit of content across the NewsCorp empire. And, the reasoning goes, if the WSJ can do it it ought to apply to other product like the Fox content produced for Hulu.

The thing that is being overlooked is that the WSJ is special – a specialized audience to whom the Journal is as much of a financial tool or aspirational statement as it is a news source. Generalizing into the realm of online media is dangerous. And, introducing the notion of charging for online content a the rate equal to a newspaper is on slippery slope.

The reason is demographic: As long as Murdoch is alive, it’s probably a viable strategy. The point is that at age 81, he’s right. A lot of his audience is not 30 years old, and don’t value the Journal as much as someone in their 40′s or 50′s. In ten years, though, they will be forty. They just won’t be subscribers to the Wall Street Journal, since the habit (not the delivery mechanism) did not get set early. And Hulu will be forgotten, since it did not take all that much time to fire up the torrents again.

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