Great media sites: FT.com and WSJ.com

BtoB Media Business magazine named the Web sites of The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal among the 10 best in the industry.

The magazine said that the FT.com was the best of the paid sites, while the WSJ.com was the best in the business news sector.

The magazine wrote, “Meanwhile, executives from the Financial Times talked to other news organizations about the success of their paid subscription strategies. The International Herald Tribune quoted John Ridding, Financial Times chief executive, saying, ‘People [are] throwing up their hands and saying it’s not possible for general publishers to charge. I think it is possible, and necessary, for them to charge.’

“Ben Hughes, global commercial director and deputy CEO of the Financial Times, said FT.com would be ‘trying out the pay-per-article model next year’ in addition to continuing to build its paid subscriber base. ‘We need to be as flexible as possible,’ he added, to give users a choice in how they will pay for content.

“The American Lawyer, the Incisive Media brand whose americanlawyer.com was selected as this year’s great nontechnology trade site, is also in the midst of an evolution in its subscription strategy. As a paid publication, The American Lawyermade only a limited amount of its magazine content available for free on its Web site. That strategy did not change when the Web site was relaunched in May 2008. However, a new free e-newsletter, the Am Law Daily, now provides a significant layer of content in the form of original daily news.”

Read more here.