I know someone who was laid off from a large Houston company four years ago or so, who had an online WSJ subscription paid for by his employer. Today, the log-in for his subscription still works, and it’s a certainty that neither he nor his former company is paying for it.

The Journal doesn’t want to call him on it, or anyone else in the same boat – and you have to suspect there are many, especially with corporate layoffs of the past several months. The Journal knows those subscriptions aren’t any good and never will be paid. But if they keep ‘em on the books, they can brag about having paid online circulation big enough to charge advertisers a premium.

In other words, the invalid online subscriptions are worth more to the Journal unpaid – for the resulting ad rates they charge.

Every week one of us picks a topic and writes a post on it, and the other writes a second post in response. We cover a variety of topics. I’m an economist/policy analyst and he’s a theology student so it ranges from philosophical to political to economic to general social commentary. These posts fall into the “general social commentary” box.

My brother’s initial post on the decline of newspapers is here: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2009/05/demise-of-newspaper-and-new-paths-for.html

My response is here: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2009/05/good-news-and-bad-news-on-state-of-news.html