E-Media Tidbits

A month ago, as I wrote earlier, I was willing to pay $10 a month to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal on my Kindle. I canceled that subscription last week, after the release of the WSJ iPhone application that provides free access to all Journal content.

The iPhone app carries ads at the bottom of the screen, but I don't mind. I also get audio and video content from WSJ through the app. Meanwhile, Subscribing to WSJ.com currently costs $89 per year. ($99 per year if you want the print edition, too.) And, as I noted elsewhere, WSJ's own subscription page currently doesn't even mention subscribing via Kindle.

What's going on with WSJ's pricing?

Apparently WSJ plans to start charging for some of its iPhone app-delivered content at some point. Wired.com reports:

"There is free, and then there is free, apparently. A Dow Jones spokeswoman wrote to Wired.com Thursday to say that the company does intend to charge for some content consumed on smartphones 'so we have a consistent experience across multiple platforms,' though the company is 'still exploring its options' and isn't saying when that might happen. They would offer 'both free and subscription content, so the idea is to mirror the experience on the site,' the spokeswoman said."

"...Eight months after it released its Blackberry app Dow is still saying that 'Full access to subscriber content (is free) for a limited time only.' There is a free mobile site that has a large sampling of the Journal's content. ...We'll see if the almost certain bad will of a giveth and taketh away revenue model is worth trying to put the content genie back in the bottle."

WSJ.com founding editor and publisher Neil Budde (who just joined Daily Me) recently exploded some common myths about WSJ.com's pricing model -- a nuanced history that often gets oversimplified.

...Meanwhile, former Dow Jones CEOPeter Kann reportedly recently told a class of Columbia journalism students, "I made the site paid because I was ignorant. I didn't know any better. I just thought people should pay for content."

But I think Printcasting founder Dan Pacheco got it right on Twitter: "Content pricing must be consistent across platforms. And [the free content on WSJ's iPhone app] shows how charging for print will get more awkward day by day."