June 8, 2009 — Online payment model proposed

A former newspaper editor and Silicon Valley entrepreneur is proposing that newspapers create a cooperative payment and authentication venture through which they can charge for online content.
Alan Mutter, a northern California consultant who worked at the San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Sun-Times before serving as an executive at a cable television provider, said his proposal, dubbed ViewPass, would enable readers to easily pay for and access content from multiple newspaper Web sites.
“ViewPass would be a single, ubiquitous brand to enable consumers to access valuable content on the Web sites and mobile platforms of all participating publishers,” Mutter wrote on his blog.
“It would be deployed as a widely recognized and widely accepted brand in a manner similar to the way Visa cards were established by the banking industry as a ready substitute for cash.”
The mechanism would also support payments for individual articles, subscriptions or bundles of content, Mutter said.
Mutter and partner Ridgely Evers presented the ViewPass concept before a group of newspaper publishers at a May 28 meeting quietly convened by the Newspaper Association of America to discuss how the industry can monetize Web content.
Mutter said ViewPass would enable readers to register once, and that the system would remember them as they moved among participating Web sites. More importantly, the software would build a profile of individual users, thus enabling “superior ad targeting,” he wrote.
News & Tech will have more information about ViewPass and other ways the industry might be able to monetize their online content in the July issue.