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An interesting article in Business Week about opening up the Wall Street Journal Online in the wake of the sale to Murdoch. For The Wall Street Journal Online, going free will come at a high cost. The daily financial newspaper is one of the few major publications to successfully charge for access to most of its online content, earning roughly $79 a year from each of its nearly 1 million Web subscribers. Once incentives and other free offers are taken into account, some analysts estimate that the paper will bring in more than $65 million this year from WSJ Online subscriptions alone. But soon-to-be owner Rupert Murdoch seems willing to sacrifice that revenue in return for the possibility of earning many millions more from online advertising. In an Aug. 8 earnings call for News Corp. ( NWS ), which plans to acquire Journal publisher Dow Jones ( DJ ) for $5.6 billion, Murdoch said both companies are debating making WSJ.com free, though there are no concrete plans yet. "I think it would...
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