《華爾街日報》將對手機讀者收費
The Wall Street Journal soon will begin charging people to read the paper on mobile devices such as their BlackBerrys, the paper's owner Rupert Murdoch said on Tuesday.
The move, which News Corp CEO Murdoch announced at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York, is an attempt to find a new way for the business daily to make more money from an increasingly popular way for people to access their news.
The Journal will start charging for mobile access "in one to two months," Murdoch said.
Under the plan, people who do not subscribe to the Journal would pay $2 a week for mobile access, and subscribers would pay $1 per week. Subscribers to both the print and online version of the paper will get mobile for free.
Charging for mobile access is one of the boldest ways yet that a U.S. newspaper has tried to increase revenue, at a time when falling circulation and print advertising revenue is threatening the survival of many newspapers.
The Wall Street Journal is one of the few US newspapers that has successfully charged for access to news on the Internet.
This year, many U.S. newspaper publishers have been debating different ways to get people to pay for news online. It is unclear if any of them will work.
At the Goldman Sachs event, Murdoch said the environment for advertising is "very much better" than three or four months ago -- a view echoed by a number of other industry executives.
He added that the company was mulling options such as subscriptions and pay-per-view for Hulu, the popular online video destination founded by News Corp and NBC Universal, which is majority owned by General Electric.
《華爾街日報》的所有者魯伯特•默多克於本週二稱，該報不久將開始對通過黑莓等手機終端閱讀報紙的讀者進行收費。
越來越多的讀者通過手機獲取新聞，這份商業日報試圖藉此開發新的盈利模式。美國新聞集團首席執行官默多克在高盛公司於紐約召開的一次會議上宣佈了這一決定。
據默多克介紹，《華爾街日報》將在‘一到兩個月內’開始對手機讀者羣收費。
按照該計劃，沒有訂閱《華爾街日報》的手機讀者需支付每週2美元的閱讀費用，報紙訂戶爲每週1美元，同時訂閱印刷版和網絡版的讀者則可免費進行手機閱讀。
手機付費閱讀是美國報紙至今所嘗試的最大膽的增收方式之一。尤其是在眼下這樣的時期，不斷下滑的報紙發行量和印刷廣告收入正威脅着很多報紙的生存。
《華爾街日報》是美國少數幾家成功實現網絡新聞付費的報紙之一。
今年，美國多家報紙出版商一直在爭論讓讀者付費閱讀網上新聞的各種方式。目前尚不清楚其中是否將有可行的方式。
默多克在高盛公司的會議上稱，目前的廣告環境比三、四個月前“好了很多”，其他的一些行業高管也持同樣看法。
他說，公司正考慮以訂閱或按點擊付費等方式對人氣視頻網站Hulu進行收費。Hulu是由新聞集團和通用電器旗下的NBC環球共同創建的。
Vocabulary:
mull：to think about carefully; consider（仔細考慮，深思）
pay-per-view：a system requiring that a subscriber pay for each program viewed（按次計費）
