Online business news sites, like Yahoo Finance and Reuters.com, must have breathed a sigh of relief when Rupert Murdoch signalled he'd keep charging, online, for the Wall Street Journal, which is a totem for believers in online subscriptions. Don't relax yet. In a wonderfully readable interview in Time Magazine, the News Corporation boss, who is negotiating for the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones, sounds ready to make the big leap: sacrificing subscription revenue, and profitability, to seize the audience for online business news. "What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global — a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks. How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you'd make ... a little bit of money."

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