Is Online Video ‘Freeing’ the WSJ?

Given the fact that online video is already a big business, it’s not a surprise to see the Wall Street Journal covering the topic thoroughly, like it did in two separate stories today. What is unusual is that the Journal’s online-video efforts — a news analysis about CBS’s online moves, and a feature about how to gain fame in a YouTube world — were both free to view Monday, instead of being locked behind the Journal’s famed pay-per-view firewall.

Even a short video clip that accompanied the YouTube feature offered embeddable code, showing at least in its coverage of the wide-open world of online video, the Journal is loosening up its pay-to-read ethos.

In fact, the Journal offers up a whole lot of video for free, including some from the Walt Mossberg/Kara Swisher All Things D site, like the following clip of Walt talking about buying a laptop. With competitors at the Washington Post and the New York Times also getting heavily into video, it makes sense that the Journal would let video material be free, since it isn’t the kind of value-add information that business types would pay for with their corporate expense accounts.

Now if Rupert Murdoch’s bid for the Journal gets accepted, maybe we will get more WSJ TV than we want, like a reality series about how those great pen-and-ink mugshots come together. Until then, we’re happy to see more from the WSJ, without having to tag it with that hated line, “subscription required.”