Brill Doubtful About Online Micropayments -- Favors Subs

By: E&P Staff Can newspapers use micropayments to dig out of a deep hole? Hardly, thinks Steve Brill, one of the co-founders of Journalism Online.

Brill told Nieman Journalism Lab's Zachary M. Seward that getting people to pay in drips and drabs probably won't cut it: "I think that people really want ... the convenience of just having a subscription as opposed to stopping and buying something."

Journalism Online is instead pushing the concept of a common platform where readers only have to sign up for one account allowing access to several partner content sites. "They'll just have to do it with one click because they'll have a password," Brill told Seward. "They won't have to set up an account every time they want to spend for an article."

Check out more, here, including slides from Journalism Online's presentation to newspaper executives during a meeting held in Chicago last week.