As newspapers examine how to get customers to pay for their content, today it was announced that WSJ.com will become the first big newspaper to implement a pricing model many other publications are studying.

The Financial Times reports News Corp. will introduce micro-payments for individual articles and premium subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal's Website later this year.

"A sophisticated micropayments service" will launch this autumn, Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Journal, told FT.

The plan is to charge small sums to occasional users who don't want to pay for the $100 annual subscription. Pricing for individual articles has yet to be decided, but Thomson says they would be "rightfully high".