How to read Wall Street Journal, NY Times online for free

I’m always reluctant to link to articles in the Wall Street Journal from this blog—or from my ezine, The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week—because you can read them online for a short time, and then the newspaper puts them behind a paywall.

But did you know you can still beat the system?

BusinessInsider.com has written a handy tutorial on how to read the New York Times and the Wall St. Journal online for free. The Times launches its paywall on March 28 and you’ll be able to read 20 articles per month, for free.

Accessing more than that is quite simple, really, but you need to invest a minute or two looking, and doing a little cutting and pasting.

Here’s a quick summary of how to access free content in the Journal. Most likely, the process will be similar for the Times.

Go to the newspaper’s website. When you find an article you want to read, you’ll know it’s behind a paywall when you see a lock next to the headline. Simply cut and paste the headline into the Google search box. The article you want to read should come up first in the search results. Click through.

“The little secret that the WSJ understands that most newspapers don’t is that the vast majority of readers will never bother to do this.  The ones that have to read the WSJ for work will buy a subscription.  The rest won’t check it often enough to know what to search for.  But their little secret shouldn’t stop YOU from enjoying the content.”