Steve Brill’s plan to save newspapers

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Steven Brill has never lacked for smarts or confidence. Soon after graduating from Yale, he founded the magazine American Lawyer, sold it and made a ton of money. Later he launched Court TV, sold it and made another ton. He also started the media watch-dog magazine ‘Brill’s Content.’ Well, two out of three isn’t bad.

Now Brill wants to save newspapers. He’s teamed up with former cable mogul Leo Hindery and ex-Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz to create Journalism Online L.L.C. and is pitching the industry on letting his team establish a universal system for publishers to charge for content.

Of course, he’s not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Journalism Online will take a small cut of the subscription fees (which have not been worked out yet).

Brill says he’s near deals with several major publishers but wouldn’t name names. The big fish he wants to hook is News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, who has become quite the evangelist on the subject. On Wednesday’s earnings call it sounded like Murdoch was channeling Brill when he said, ‘too many content owners have been passive with obvious violations of content.... There is no doubt that the traditional newspaper model has to change.’

After years of saying to people, ‘Come on in and take our content for free,’ the question is whether Brill can put the toothpaste back in the tube. He thinks so. ‘If enough papers do it, the national audience will follow,’ he says, adding that the debate within the industry has gone from ‘if to when and how much will we charge.’

Getting as many publishers on board as possible is crucial for Brill because ultimately he’s going to have to face down big, bad Google, whose aggregator service Google News has become the bane of the newspaper industry’s existence. ‘You have much more strength in numbers,’ Brill said. ‘No single newspaper or publishing company has leverage with someone who has successfully collected so much data.’

So is Google ready to sit with Brill yet? ‘There have been some preliminary discussions about having discussions.’ We won’t hold our breath.

--Joe Flint