CNN.com is to drop its paid-access live video service from Sunday as part of a major overhaul of its international website.
The revamped site will be entirely free, featuring new personalisation options, user-generated content, links to other sites and aggregated comment, with the aim of making the cable news network a "good web citizen".
The subscription service Pipeline, which currently costs 99c a day or $2.95 month, will become free and the site will focus on advertising revenue.
Future mobile services, including video, will also be supported by advertising.
Nick Wrenn, CNN's managing editor for Europe Middle East and Africa, said the free access model would allow the site to build its audience.
"It's a better model for us right now," he told MediaGuardian.co.uk.
"News organisations need to be flexible, so there could be a time when we put some more content behind a payment wall.
"But so many people are used to getting content for free it is hard to make it work."
Mr Wrenn said that news sites had now grown up and realised that to be "good web citizens", they need to allow and encourage linking to other news and commentary sites that complement news stories.
He said that research showed the site needed to provide services for different types of users such as scanners, browsers and sceptics and that users navigated to stories through RSS readers and search engines rather than through the home page.
Mr Wrenn said: "Journalism needs to adapt. The internet has become mainstream in a much shorter space of time than radio or TV, but journalists need to be aware of how people consume news differently."
The new site will invite users to submit text, photos and video, and build a personalised homepage from a choice of headline and weather feeds.
Selected content from CNN's 27-year video archive will also be accessible for free.
CNN runs a US news site as well as CNN International, and an Arab-language version that launched in 2001. The sites record 24 million unique users each month.
