Pay-per-view news?!

Later this year The Wall Street Journal is to introduce what it calls a ‘micro-payment’ scheme.

In the face of continued reductions in advertising spend, publishers everywhere have been looking at alternative ways of bolstering revenue, and I’m sure many will be watching the Wall Street Journal with great interest.

However, it should be noted that a significant amount of its online content can only be accessed after you have paid a $100 plus annual subscription anyway - so pay as you read might well work out cheaper for some. Either way it is a hell of a lot easier to offer alternative charging methods for something, than it is to introduce new ones to a service that was previously free.

Also, this is the same Wall Street Journal that has only just recently launched applications for a number of smart phones, that grants access to most of its online content for free - strange enough in the face of a one off subscription fee, and even odder if micro-payment is really expected to be a serious revenue generator.

Above all however, the biggest problem they will surely face, lies in overcoming the very nature of the Internet itself - a platform that was specifically designed to facilitate the sharing of ideas, news and information.

Thanks for reading, that’ll be £0.99. Cheers.