Dear Wall Street Journal: Your Pay Wall Didn’t Work

Early this morning, a breaking news link was pasted across the front of www.wsj.com with a clear headline: Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, was stepping off the Apple Board of Directors. I’m not here to comment on that, although it’d be fun to mock the iPhone/Google Voice flap (that’s not my job, there’re others who are much better than me at it).

I found out about that link through my Twitter feed this morning. Naturally, I’m curious. I want more. So I click to the following:

Hmm. Subscription required to read the whole story. So, what did I do? Pull out my credit card?

Nope. I waited fifteen minutes for it to appear not once, but twice in my reader:

Note that the second link actually takes you to All Things D, the tech blog of, wait for it, the Wall Street Journal. No pay wall there. Just a little bit more information about the history of the flap and Schmidt’s interactions with Apple, with quotes.

So, when you don’t want to pay the Wall Street Journal for a wire story, just go to their blog for the full thing. Lesson learned.