I have not ranted in a while, but this one needed to be documented.
I already think that the $119.00 I pay for my annual subscription to the Wall Street Journal is high, but I do find it provides me with good business news, although sometimes more biased than I would like.
Yesterday, Dow Jones announced that, on October 24th, they will start charging for access to their full content when using their WSJ Mobile Reader applications on the Blackberry and iPhone/Touch devices. I have no issues with that, if we are going to continue having a professional press core, they need to find a means of generating revenue. This idea that all content should be free is ridiculous and people need to understand that there is a cost to generating content.
The source of my rant is that Dow Jones wants to charge $1.00 per week ($52 per year) in addition to my online only subscription of $119.00 in order for me to have access the exact same contact using the WSJ Mobile Reader on my iPhone as I do on my PC and via the iPhone's Safari browser. That would be a total of $171.00 per year and for me a bridge to far. I understand charging more for a print and online subscription because of the additional paper and distribution costs. I don't get the print subscription because I don't need it and it would be a waste of paper that would need to be recycled (my eco message). I just think that if you have an online subscription it should be available to you on any compatible online device. Could you see Apple charging individually for playing or viewing content on each iPod/iPhone/Mac/PC/Apple TV you own; I think not.
Note: The WSJ Mobile applications themselves are free and WSJ will provide selected free content, but access to the full content is by subscription. I don't think they use the iTunes subscription model since they already have a billing back end system in place. I wonder what Apple thinks of that.
Please voice your opinion by emailing WSJ at onlinejournal (at) wsj.com.
Update: I did file my complaint with WSJ, and received a polite response that they will pass it on to upper management. We will see what happens…
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