Rupert Murdoch has now more clearly indicated plans to make the Wall Street Journal’s content available online for free once he takes control of the WSJ’s parent company Dow Jones. On November 12th, Murdoch told The Australian that he would eliminate the subscription fee for the WSJ site as part of a plan to boost readership from 1 million to 20 million, which he believed would produce sufficient additional advertising revenue to make up for the lost $50 million in subscription fees.

http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,22748712-462,00.html

If Murdoch’s move draws the volume of advertising dollars he is predicting, this could have a significant impact on the advertising revenues of other financial news outlets, as noted by Douglas McIntyre.

http://www.247wallst.com/2007/11/murdoch-say-wal.html

A first step towards free access to WSJ online content has already been made. On November 13th the WSJ site started adding “Digg” buttons to its site, which enable Digg users to have free access to any articles that other readers submit to Digg.

http://blog.digg.com/?p=98

One blogger has questioned whether advertisers will be willing to pay WSJ the same level of per-impression rates for the less wealthy largely college age demographics of Digg users as they are for reaching the wealthier business clientele of the subscription WSJ site. He suggests that this demographic shift could lead to advertisers preferring measurements that focus less on impressions made and more on sales generated.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/11/14/digg-this-wall-street-journal-adds-buttons

Of course this argument could also easily apply to the shift to a less wealthy demographic likely to come from dropping the subscription model overall.