One of the most successful newspaper Web sites -- The Wall Street Journal Online -- is turning 10 this month. To celebrate, WSJ.com is once again hosting an "open house" starting today through May 10 making the entire site free.

In New York today, street hawkers -- along with L. Gordon Crovitz, publisher of the Journal and president of the consumer media group -- are handing out free copies of the paper while promoting the open house. WSJ.com set up a "virtual newsroom," smack in the middle of Times Square, with a band of employees shouting out the benefits of the online paper.

On Tuesday, the Online Journal is heading to San Francisco where it will sponsor free passes on the city's metro, MUNI.

To mark the anniversary, the Online Journal is featuring among other things, a history of WSJ.com with past site designs, the best and worst ideas from the Internet boom and past decade, how the Internet is portrayed in film with a gallery of movies, and the perfect news site circa 2016.

During a breakfast with the press this morning, executives with Online Journal said the Web site placed fifth with 761,000 subscribers when ranked against newspaper circulation behind USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

Crovitz said "most" of the online subscribers solely take the Web version and are typically a decade younger than print subscribers. Over 90% of people who try the Online Journal through normal registration start a full subscription, said Crovitz.

The open house trial, which does not require a person to register, tends to covert "tens of thousands" over to a full-paid subscription, according to Crovitz.

The Journal is celebrating its 10-year anniversary as restless shareholders, sinking stocks, and a general malaise that the medium has lived out its salad days is hammering the newspaper industry. In the midst of the negative environment, Crovitz -- a rising star at the Dow Jones who was recently named publisher of the Wall Street Journal -- quoted the Journal's legendary editor Barney Kilgore who said that "content is what counts not the wrapper."

It's an idea the Journal is taking to heart as it prepares for a print redesign to accommodate a shrinking web width. Crovitz revealed little about the process as he told the group about "Journal 3.0" and how the franchise was prepared to evolve.

"While newspapers are no longer the only game in town delivering news, there is an oppression of information," Crovitz said. Editors have to acknowledge that people get their news in a variety of ways, including blogs, but that the role of the newspaper can provide "an oasis of calm" by giving the news context.

Dow Jones, the parent company of the Journal, has been undergoing a transition including a reorganization that groups the company by markets as opposed to channels of distribution and a newly appointed CEO, Richard Zannino.