Making WSJ.com free doesn't make it the biggest biz news site

Mike Shields of MediaWeek writes Monday that the current debate about whether to make The Wall Street Journal‘s web site free misses some key issues surrounding news sites.

Shields wrote, “Not everyone believes a free WSJ.com is the right move, and some contend that attempting to match the girth of the top finance sites would be a fool’s errand.

“Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield recently speculated that the Journal, which licenses content to sites like Yahoo Finance, might reconsider that practice as it looks to take them on. But one rival scoffed, ‘Please, let them do that.’

“‘People don’t realize making the Journal free doesn’t automatically mean it becomes the biggest site,’ said MarketWatch.com founder Larry Kramer, now a senior advisor with Polaris Venture Partners. He said WSJ.com would require a major adjustment in publishing philosophy to compete with the biggest sites. ‘WSJ.com is about producing analytical reports with an eye towards publishing once a day,’ he said. ‘It’s not a real-time enterprise.’

“To become more real-time, WSJ.com might have to embrace some level of news aggregation itself, added Kramer.”

Read more here.