Paywall Helps WSJ Add Subscribers

Keep it up, and they will pay.

While a few newspapers dropped their paywall during and after the election, The Wall Street Journal took a hard line and left theirs up. That disciplined strategy paid off.

According to Poynter, the Journal saw its digital subscriber rate double on Tuesday (compared to a typical Tuesday), triple on Wednesday and quadruple on Thursday.

Katie Vanneck-Smith, chief customer officer and global managing director of Dow Jones, told Poynter that the bump in subscribers didn’t surprise her at all.

“Call me old-fashioned, but if your business model is to say ‘we are a paid-for, subscription-driven business,’ changing your mind willy-nilly is not a consumer-focused decision,” she explained.

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