The Wall Street Journal Online is Free this week. And Tyler Cowen from Marginal Revolution is blogging in their EconoBlog this week as well.
Update: I just found this story via one of the WayPath links below — Blogs push news sites to open up:
By Frank Barnako, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 1:37 PM ET Oct. 20, 2004WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) — Dow Jones plans to offer free access to its online edition of the Wall Street Journal next month. The entire site will be available for five days starting Nov. 8, according to a report published by the Online Journalism Review.
Lifting the gates on the subscription site is a “nod to the ‘news conversation’ online,” Mark Glaser wrote. His article also included comments from executives at other news sites, including those of the BBC, CNet Networks and the New York Times. Many of them addressed the influence Web logs have had in pointing readers to many and varied news resources on the Internet, fueling the “conversation.”
“I think Google News (GOOG: news, chart, profile) has been a shot across the bow of all news originators, making us say, ‘hold on,’” said Richard Deverell, head of BBC News Interactive. “It’s [become] very easy to flip between different sources of news. We either try to reverse that trend, which is likely to be futile, or we facilitate it.” As a result, he told Glaser, the BBC is including links from its stories to relevant items outside its site.
Bill Grueskin, managing editor for WSJ.com (DJ: news, chart, profile), agrees. “Between Google News and everything else [like blogs], we had to decide how to open them up, and it’s something I don’t have the answer to yet.” One step has been for the Journal to offer free access to one story a day, alerting some Webloggers so that they can consider pointing to it.
Glaser said news sites, including the New York Times on the Web, are opening up previously walled-off content to boost readership and gain currency among bloggers who might link to stories.
Interesting times! 
