Kenneth Li and Robert MacMillan of Reuters report Friday that making The Wall Street Journal‘s web site free, which is the plan of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, would hurt the revenue of other Dow Jones & Co. properties such as Factiva and Dow Jones Newswires.
Li and MacMillan wrote, “But the plan could undercut Dow Jones’s Internet news archive Factiva and its Dow Jones Newswires, which offer Wall Street Journal content that is unavailable anywhere else, Dow Jones spokeswoman Christine Mohan said.
“Dow Jones’s Enterprise Media division, which includes Factiva and Newswires, contributed only 35 percent of revenue but accounted for 67.2 percent of segment operating income in the first nine months of the year.
“‘The exclusivity of Journal content provides value beyond the Web site,’ Mohan said.
“The exact impact is hard to come by, but Journal Publisher Gordon Crovitz said at a media industry conference in October that Dow Jones reaps more than half a billion dollars in subscription revenue across the company’s offerings.”
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