Old media looking to build payment system for their sites

An impressive group of media executives are forming a new company to build a system for online payments. It's yet another sign that the old media are moving beyond the panic stage and beginning to look at ways to make the new media work for them. A New York Times story described the new system this way: "As the company envisions the system, a nonpaying reader on a magazine or newspaper site would reach a certain point and see a page asking for payment — the Journalism Online system, operating within the publication’s Web site. But a reader who wanted a subscription to multiple sites would go directly to the new company’s own site." The system would be built around credit cards. My prediction is that the era of free content is rapidly coming to a halt.