While Journalism Online claimed earlier this fall that it had collected letters of intent from more than 1,000 media outlets, it has been unclear when the startup’s paywall platform will actually launch—or how many of those news organizations it will actually have on board. Co-founder Steve Brill (pictured) provided some clarity at the FTC’s How Will Journalism Survive The Internet Age? conference Tuesday, saying the company was “about a week away” from shipping a beta version of its software to its first affiliates. He added that “sometime right after the first of the year there should be people buying stuff off of the platform we’re producing.” Brill has obviously been a big advocate of paid content—and continued on that charge at the conference, questioning after a presentation from Yahoo’s Lem Lloyd, for instance, if “all that behavioral ad targeting ... is working so well, why are we here?”