WebMediaBrands CEO Alan Meckler
Wall Street Journal Publishes Meckler Letter To The Editor
The Wall Street Journal print edition today was kind enough today to publish a letter I submitted in response to L. Gordon Crovitz's Op-Ed piece earlier this week. My letter follows:
L. Gordon Crovitz referenced me as the "chairman of Internet.com" in his essay on subscription models for newspaper Web sites. Mr.Crovitz has taken my remarks of 10 years ago out of context. Back then I also added that by not making Wsj.com an open model that Dow Jones would miss the opportunity to become one of the largest Web sites in the world (in terms of unique visitors and page views). A subscription model has probably cost the Wsj.com hundreds of millions of page views per month and perhaps as many as 50 million additional unique visitors. A financial website of the magnitude that the Wsj.com "could have been" would be worth much more today than the present level of success. A quasi-open and partial subscription model would be far more valuable for sure. Turning to Mr. Crovitz's comparing the Wsj.com model to daily newspapers such as The New York Times is unfair. Wsj.com had and has the advantage of more "Need to have information" and unique information whereas the Nytimes.com is overwhelmingly loaded with "like to have information." "Need to have information" will always work as a subscription model. Unfortunately "like to have information" will always fail as a subscription model due to intense competition.
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For WSJ, like any other business, profit is the goal. Page views may be a way to get there if the Ad revenue from he page views can compensate for loss on subscriber revenue. There are other ways to monetize like unbundling instead of relying on shaky Ad revenue.
See http://unbundling.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/unbundling-the-wall-street-journal/
I see no reason WSJ should give i away for free and looking at many newspapers that are folding, they never should have given their online version for free too.