• Advertising Age, Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:15 AM

Steven Brill, a media entrepreneur who founded Court TV and the magazines American Lawyer and Brill's Content, has launched a company to help newspapers charge for stories online. The start-up, called Journalism Online, will build and license a payment system that will allow newspapers to charge for content on the Web.

Brill is joined by former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and former cable executive and media investor Leo Hindery. The start-up has retained law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner to negotiate licensing agreements with search engines and portals on newspapers' behalf.

The company plans to offer both subscriptions for single publications on an annual or monthly fee for all the papers and magazines participating in the system. So far, the business has no clients and is talking to newspapers and magazines on how the payment system will work. The system will also report metrics to help publications find a balance between charging for online articles and using free content to build traffic and attract advertising.

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