High-powered trio setting up system to enable pay-for-content

Several longtime media players, including Stephen Brill (creator of Brill's Content, Court TV and American Lawyer) have launched a company called Journalism Online Inc. which aims to provide print publishers with the tools necessary to get paid for their online content.

Along with Brill, the company includes Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and Leo Hindery, who headed Tele-Communications Inc., Global Crossing and the Yes Network.

As the New York Times story reported waspishly, "Their plan might not draw much attention save for the stature of the people involved."

Journalism Online hopes to have a product ready by fall and their unique selling propositions are that readers could use a single system for different publications and publishers would not have to develop their own system.

No publishers have so far signed on as clients, but active talks have been held.

As the company envisions the system, a non-paying reader on a magazine or newspaper site would reach a certain point and see a page asking for payment — the Journalism Online system, operating within the publication’s Web site. But a reader who wanted a subscription to multiple sites would go directly to the new company’s own site.

“The most important thing is it’s simple to use,” Mr. Brill said in an interview. “Much of the barrier to charging online is the transaction friction, as opposed to the actual cost. With this system, you’d have a single password, give your credit number just once.”

He said that for the unlimited subscriptions, “we’re playing with a figure of $15 a month.”

Each publisher would be free to set its own policies, like determining which items are free and which are not, setting its own prices, and deciding whether to use a pay-per-click system or a daily, weekly or monthly subscription rate.