The Wall Street Journal’s new mobile app pricing plan asks users to pay a hefty $2 per week fee for the privilege of reading the “paper” on their iPhone or Blackberry. Subscribers to either the online or print editions of the paper pay $1 per week and subscribers to both get the app for free.

Conventional wisdom, if there can be said to be any, in the still-new mobile news market is that you slash your readership by a factor of 10 or more when you charge for mobile content. There are simply too many free options and readers are accustomed to getting their news online for free.

It seems that Murdoch’s goal with this strategy is not to make money from the app but create added value for subscribing to the print and online editions. It’s an interesting approach and consistent with his assertion that news has a real, and very high value.

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