FT is Free

The Financial Times announced on Monday that they would be allowing free access to the content on their website. The FT was a late player in paid web access following the WSJ but are now following the lead of the NYT in opening up the site. From Mediapost:

FT.com isn't actually opening the doors all the way: there's a limit of 30 free stories per month, and visitors are required to register at the site after viewing the first five. The paper said the new policy is designed to make the site more accessible to blogs and news aggregators--increasingly important sources of traffic for news sites. Around the same time, FT.com will also launch a number of new products, including more video journalism and new editorial features, columns and tools.

It is great to see some of these newspaper sites change even though it can be argued it is Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones that is prompting the action.