Our country’s premier business journal has charged for online content since Day 1.
One of the lead organizers of The Wall Street Journal’s Web site said he never thought not to charge, and today 1 million www.wsj.com readers pay for access and 10 percent pay for full access. I’m one of them; access is bundled with the print subscription delivered each weekday to my SBJ office and on weekends to my home.
“Most people think of wsj.com as a paid Web site,” said Gordon Crovitz, the former WSJ publisher, during a presentation at the Alliance of Area Business Publications summer conference this year in Indianapolis.
It’s hard to imagine WSJ as a local business journal, but that’s exactly what it started as. Crovitz told our members he’s seen old office memos that questioned whether the paper should expand its coverage north of Canal Street in Manhattan.
An 1899 Wall Street Journal ad asked, “What if you knew as much as your broker?” And then the paper delivered the financial information to enable readers to answer that question.
I ask, “What if you knew as much as your competitor?” SBJ has long been touted as the authority on southwest Missouri business news, and we strive daily to uphold and exceed that standard.
Murney & Associates Realtor David Martin has told us, “I wait for the SBJ to see what is happening in housing, new companies, changes in the economy, deeds of trust and new home permits.”
Entrepreneur Paul Sundy’s take: “It is the finger on the pulse. It’s not a rumor mill but a fact mill. A lot of things you hear around town are rumors, then you turn to SBJ to confirm the facts.”
Bringing a unique product to market carries hard costs. We view the process in our shop as that of any manufacturer. We just happen to manufacture a medium where we report business news. After years of review, namely by our own cross-departmental Web committee, we’ve determined that production costs should be paid by the consumer no matter where the consumption takes place – printed hard copy delivered by mail or digitally on the Web. You wouldn’t give away your company’s product, would you?
Other industries are in the thick of the paid vs. unpaid information debate. One emerging model is called “freemium,” wherein services are offered without charge but users can opt-in for fee-based features.
Online music provider Pandora.com offers a free version and an ad-free version for paying subscribers. Apple’s iTunes makes available free audio and video downloads weekly, but obviously, sales by the song are its bread and butter. The no-charge movie database IMDB.com has a pro version for paid users.
Online Korean video games are free to play, but payment gets users a sharper sword or a faster car. We believe sbj.net sharpens your sword and gives you faster mobility in business.
Author Stewart Brand said in 1984: “Information wants to be free. It also wants to be expensive.”
Brand later would elaborate:
“Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy and recombine – too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property,’ the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.”
The key in business-to-business media is to produce the right information at the right time as business decisions are being made.
With this as our backdrop, we’ve developed a paywall model for sbj.net that goes up Sept. 1. (Please read the story on page 3.)
The Web site will look and feel the same as it does today, but certain content – most of the weekly issues and Daily Update/Top Stories – will require payment to read in full.
Stored in sbj.net’s free “front yard” will be breaking news, blogs, photo galleries, events calendar, the Life and list sections, and story archives, so long as a sponsor pays to “free” them from the vault. We’ve also decided to make available for free the regular print features of Business Spotlight, Newsmakers and one-on-one interviews, along with one Daily Update e-newsletter story each day.
Additionally, we’ll roll out a digital version of the weekly paper, and a smartphone application featuring SBJ breaking news is under development.
Current paid subscribers will receive their choice of print, Web and digital subscriptions – all three if they want. An upgraded subscription comes with 10 additional passwords to share in the office or with friends.
You are what you know. Is it worth it to you to know more and to know it sooner than the next guy?
Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]
