Dow Jones CEO on WSJ.com Paywall

Today, on Dow Jones' third quarter conference call, CEO Richard Zannino discussed whether the company might bring down the paywall on The Wall Street Journal's web site, a move that has been widely speculated about since Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones was accepted this summer.

"Our interests are entirely aligned with News Corp.'s interest on that score," said Mr. Zannino. "So we're going to spend some time here digging even deeper, perhaps, than we've dug in the past into looking at the model, and we are going to do that together with News Corp. and Rupert, and we'll come to a logical conclusion."

Gordon Crovitz, The Journal's publisher, added: "The opportunity and the challenge now is can we be both the best and the largest [business web site]? And at 10 million uniques for the online Journal, obviously a million of those subscribers, we're on our way but we're not the biggest. So is there a way to continue to expand our audience while maximizing the profitability of our online operations?"

There just might be....