That was fast. Just shy of two years after launch, Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery Jr. have sold their “make journalism pay” business to someone who already makes money from publishing. Chicago-based R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co. has acquired Journalism Online and its consumer-facing Press+ paid content…

Updated: In a doubleheader announcement meant to move the needle on Rupert Murdoch’s ambitious paid content plans, News Corp has acquired the Skiff e-reading platform from the Hearst startup and is joining forces with Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz through a stake in their start-up Journalism Online. The Skiff acquisition…

Local newspapers may actually have an easier time charging for content than national and international news brands like the New York Times (NYSE: NYT). And what’s the biggest threat to paid music? Well, probably not piracy. These were among the assertions by panelists on paidContent2010’s The Truth About Subscriptions, who…

Highlights from our Staci Kramer’s conversation with Steven Brill of Journalism Online, Jeff Price of The Sporting News and David Hyman of MOG: —Sporting News: A new convert to the paid content model. Price, who just joined Sporting News as publisher this week, says that the Sporting News will charge…

Digital subscriptions are all the buzz now but the idea is far from new—and far from certain. How can the needle be moved on an idea that worked so well for newspapers and magazines so well for so long? Does selling music by the song or news by the article…

Observers aren’t the only ones hearing more about Journalism Online and its plans for Press+ today. The company’s affiliates—publishers who have gone beyond expressing an interest but may not have committed yet—got a combo update/pitch, obtained by paidContent and published below.

Finally some clarity after months of mystery about possible affiliates and constant questions about whether Journalism Online is reality or vaporware. A private beta has been underway for weeks but JO founders Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz declined until now to identify any of the affiliates taking part. Turns out…

Journalism Online hasn’t moved beyond letters of intent on the commercial side but the Steve Brill-Gordon Crovitz-Leo Hindery Jr. enterprise is adding a non-profit service that already has a launch partner: the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). The non-profit service announced this morning (these are intentional non-profits,…

Journalism Online, the new make-journalism-pay venture from Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery, has letters of intent from newspaper publishers representing 506 newspapers, magazine and “leading global news sites” but isn’t identifying any by name. That’s after weeks of promising a list of interested publishers. They will be announced,…

Some two dozen newspaper industry execs gathered quietly (they thought) in suburban Chicago Thursday to continue a conversation about industry solutions that started last month. In between the two, Steve Brill, Leo Hindery and Gordon Crovitz announced a start-up that hopes to be part of the solution and quickly joined…

This isn’t the first time Steve Brill has claimed he has the solutions for making money online. Back in 2000, Brill pieced together a complex group of partners, including *Primedia*, to launch a controversial micropayment site called Contentville.com. In 2001 he engineered a complicated series of deals with then-Primedia (NYSE:…

How did Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery, Jr., wind up cofounding a venture to make online journalism pay? Or, in this case, Journalism Online, LLC. It dates as far back as the ‘90s when Hindery almost wound up owning a stake in Brill’s CourtTV joint venture only to…

The news business has problems and entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and cable guy-turned-investor Leo Hindery, Jr. think they have the answers. The three are founding Journalism Online, LLC, funded with an undisclosed amount by Hindery’s InterMedia Advisors, LLP, to provide news publishers with content-based…