Donnelley rescues Journalism Online
Jinfo Blog

By Penny Crossland

Item

As paywalls of various kinds have been emerging over the months, we have been hearing more about companies developing payment systems that enable publishers to manage their online subscriptions. Recently Apple launched its subscription plan, closely followed by Google’s One-Pass online payment system .

One company that has been in this business for a while now is Journalism Online. It developed its payment system Press+ almost two years ago, as reported by Nancy Davis Kho at the time. However, as she pointed out back then, Press + was launched without major customers and has struggled to acquire big hitters since then. According to Reuters, its main publishing customers are the MediaNews Group, a US regional newspaper publisher, the Augusta Chronicle and the Scranton Times Tribune.  In the summer of 2010, NewsCorp acquired a stake in Journalism Online – see a LiveWire posting on the news here  – but this did not provide the company with enough of a boost to make a go of the venture.

The much-needed boost has now been provided by RR Donnelley, one of the world’s largest printing and integrated communications businesses, which last week acquired Journalism Online for an undisclosed sum. RR Donnelley’s deep pockets – it turned over $10 billion in 2010 – and well-established relationships with B2B customers, will help Journalism Online sell Press+ to a different market altogether. As hotnewsonly points out, the B2B sector is likely to put up paywalls for its niche content faster than general newspaper sites are likely to, making the Journalism Online acquisition a wise move.

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