Free Jim Cramer!

            No Web-site proprietor has been more vociferous about the importance of
charging readers for content than TheStreet.com's James J. Cramer. "Our
subscription model is precisely why we have been so successful in getting ads
while others have failed miserably," he wrote in a clamorous essay titled
"Wrong! Take Two" for TheStreet.com less than four months ago.

            After making all that noise, Cramer softly announced today that
TheStreet.com is being split into five financial advice sites--three paid and
two free--and that one of the free sites will be called TheStreet.com. "Going
free for news is a must if we are to compete worldwide for readers," Cramer
said in a press release. "Co-founder Marty Peretz and I welcome this plan as a
way to boost page views dramatically while growing additional revenue
streams."

            If 
                  Slate
               's experience is any guide, Cramer's hopes
of a big payoff from going free will be fulfilled. And, of course,

                  Slate
                also once was known for its noisy defense of the
notion of charging for content. But unlike Cramer (or so it seems to me),

                  Slate
                never claimed that the paying model was the only
true path and that anyone who disagreed was "Wrong!" Our position was, no one's
figured it out yet--we're trying this way. A diligent search for embarrassing
quotes found nothing better than a remark by 
                  Slate
               
Editor Michael Kinsley, when we began charging in 1998, that this was our "fish
or cut bait" moment. And: "It's important to us to break even and to be a
business, not someone's charity case." When we reversed course 10 months later,
Kinsley was duly sheepish.

            But Cramer does not traffic in agnosticism or sheepishness. Just four months
ago in "Wrong! Take Two," he was calling free circulation proponents
"suicidalists," "deceivers," and "fools" who "have their adherents even within
the walls of TheStreet.com. It makes me livid. I regard these people as
betrayers and scoundrels who would take the money we have all invested in
[TheStreet.com] and throw it away."

            Relying on advertising to support content is hopeless, he wrote. "I can't
stress enough what a bust most advertising has been. The ad revenues are
totally anemic. And they will stay that way for one main reason: Most of the
Web is free. The vast majority of advertisers don't want to appear on free
sites. They don't trust them"

            Maybe today's announcement is part of an elaborate strategy whereby Cramer
will annually split his Web sites like amoebas and set some of them free like
Lincoln, always retaining some paid sites as starter dough for the next batch.
Hey, it's a thicket of mixed metaphors, but it isn't the craziest revenue model
on the Web.