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Posted by Jeffrey F. Rayport on February 6, 2008 7:30 PM. Jeffrey is founder and chairman of Marketspace LLC, a Monitor Group company.

It’s not often that the conventional wisdom in business gets turned on its head not once but twice in a month’s time. But Rupert Murdoch’s recent decision, following News Corps’ acquisition of Dow-Jones, to keep the Wall Street Journal’s website a subscription service certainly qualifies.

Until earlier this year, the pundits of the media world widely predicted that Murdoch would swiftly put an end to the “walled garden” strategy that the Journal had pursued with WSJ Interactive from its inception in the mid-1990s. With 989,000 subscribers paying on average $60 a year, the Journal’s paid online “circulation” long ago aroused the envy of the news media world. While the Financial Times’ FT.com soldiers forth with a paid offering, even the mighty New York Times has abandoned its attempt (Times Select) to recapture lost revenues associated with taking NYTimes.com free in the 1990s.

Enter Murdoch, the vaunted Change Agent of the media world, and, presto! It’s an affirmation of the status quo. What’s going on?