Reading WSJ Articles

The Wall Street Journal has a bunch of super insightful articles. However, nearly all of the articles are behind a paywall. You used to be able to just google the URL, and click the top link but that’s since stopped working. This worked based on the custom referer: Google was an approved referer to bypass the paywall. There are, however, other approved referers even though Google is no longer. I know the 'Drudge Report' works, though there may be others. The easiest way I’ve found to automatically do this is to add the ‘Referer Control’ extension for Chrome, or similar solutions for other browsers.

Once it’s added, go to the Settings page for the extension, and add 'https://www.wsj.com’ in the site filter, and set the referee setting to ‘Custom’, with the url 'http://drudgereport.com’. This will make it seem like you’re always coming from Drudge Report, which will bypass the paywall and bring you straight to the WSJ article. Your settings should look like this:

Referer Control settings view

That being said, if you’re reading a bunch of WSJ, just get a subscription to help them out. In this day and age, with the constant attacks of upstanding news agencies as 'fake news', supporting honest journalism is a great way to fight it. As a student it’s only $50 for a full year subscription, and if you're not a student, it's only $1 a week for the first 3 months.