Murdoch Sees Free Journal Web Site

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch told stockholders in Australia Tuesday he intended to make The Wall Street Journal’s Web site free of charge.

We are studying it and we expect to make that free, he said of the Journal’s on line edition, which currently has a $79 annual subscription fee.

The Web site is one of the few news sites globally to successfully introduce a subscription model.

Murdoch told the News Corp. annual general meeting in Adelaide, where he started his company in 1953 from a newspaper he inherited from his father, that he would rather have at least 10 million to 15 million free wsj.com readers in every corner of the earth than 1 million paying subscribers, the Journal reported.

The increased readership would attract large numbers of big-spending advertisers, he said.

News Corp.’s deal to buy Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion is expected to close next month.

Murdoch said he would broaden the Journal’s coverage without sacrificing its hallmark business news.

The number of pages of the weekday U.S. print edition will rise 15 percent to 20 percent and the weekend edition will eventually double in size, he said.

He later intends to beef up the Journal’s European operations and create joint-venture editions in India and China, where demand for business and financial news will explode, he said.