• The Washington Post, Friday, November 16, 2007 10:45 AM

Earlier this week, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch announced that he was officially going to stop charging for access to the Wall Street Journal Online. The Journal was largely considered an online subscription success, although Murdoch obviously feels that a wider audience and greater ad revenue can be achieved by opening it up.

Murdoch's decision follows a trend among other well-known daily papers and business journals. Online versions of the Economist, Financial Times and The New York Times have all ditched the paid subscription model in recent months; The L.A. Times and The Washington Post's own Salon and Slate have also abandoned the subscription model in the past. Meanwhile, sports publisher ESPN offers most of its content for free, charging only for certain extras like chats with its writers.

The lesson here is that publishers for the most part cannot get away with charging for content--unless it's hyper-niche content "of intense interest" to a small number of hardcore consumers. Trade pubs, insider sports news, gambling tips and pornography all fall into that category. As PaidContent.org publisher Rafat Ali says, "Subscriptions thrive in an area where there's scarcity -- content that people can't get anywhere else. Other than that, you need an advertising-based model."

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