Steven Brill’s Problem: What Clear’s Failure Means for Journalism Online

Steven Brill’s TSA “fast pass” company and creator of the Clear card has imploded.  Verified Identity Pass takes with it more than $100 million in investor cash, the registration fees of approximately 200,000 travelers, and a dumpster-load of sensitive biometric data.  The company provides only a message that it has ceased operations as of June 22, 2009 due to creditor problems, and posts a link to its privacy policies.  The one message that seems to be coming out clearly in media is that Brill stepped aside from daily management some time ago.  Got it: you are not responsible.  Unfortunately, Brill isn’t done with us yet.  He has one more bad idea that, like Clear, involves gathering up data, segregating worthy information from unworthy, and charging for it: Journalism Online.

One might be excused for assuming that a company called Clear, founded by a lawyer and (old) media man, knows the profound importance of data, of transparency, of answers to unasked questions.  Upon its failure, Clear has nothing to say. Just a shrug of the shoulders: “Out of cash. See ya.”  No assurances to give? No FAQs about refunds or data security?  No story about what happened?  Media people love that.  Consumers even more.  Mr. Brill would like more money from both. Uh oh.

Prior to Clear, Brill created CourtTV, and publications American Lawyer and Brill’s Content (his other big failure, but less spectacular since nobody wanted to read about the dry inner workings of NPR).  He also launched and shuttered Contentville.com, an early effort at selling content and images for Web sites.   Brill has made his career and image as a snipe, a smarty pants, an alleged master at getting access to and providing critical views of information (Brill’s Content is, alas, notably, most remembered as “a media criticism magazine without any media criticism”).  But mostly, he likes trying to make money on information exchange while trying to solve big problems.  That’s his business model.  The results thus far suggest its strength and wisdom.

He’s also now responsible for one of the greatest risks to personal information security yet.  It was he who sold us on iris scans, fingerprints, background checks and credit card numbers all being gathered up, stored in one place and kept secure — for a fee.  This Brill-monetized information now lives on servers...that can’t be paid for.  It’s an identity thief’s Nirvana.  Forget my cash; may I have my fingerprints back, please? My iris scan?  Of course, the inherent value of this information remains; how it might be monetized via exchange per Brill’s model is anyone’s guess.

Not yet done being the monkey in the middle, Mr. Brill now brings forth Journalism Online, a hair-brained idea for online news micropayments that will, essentially, require collusion among publishers to set prices if it is to work. It’s Brill’s same model: all information is not equal, and those with “good” information can be monetized (e.g., travelers with “worthy” backgrounds, publishers with “worthy” stories).   Brill can’t worry about the nuisance of identity theft any longer — he has anti-trust protections to dismantle now.  He’s so attuned to today’s consumers and media world that he’s decided to ignore the pesky realities of the Internet and how people dip into multiple streams of information.  Never mind “destination” news is as charming and near-death as Aunt Edna.  Never mind that newspapers laid their own path to destruction, when they subsidized that first story with that first ad, letting us know the news just wasn’t worth what it really cost to gather. Never mind that cable and print are areas of “expertise” that no longer translate to the Web (did they ever?).  Never mind that gathering information from multiple sources, classifying it “worthy” or “unworthy,” taking payment for it, and managing for financial performance and ongoing security are not a strong suit. Never mind public trust.

An old-media mind, an irresponsible player with information-age data, a failed entrepreneur, a fool trying to put Internet genies back into newspaper bottles.  No thanks.  The world of information exchange cannot afford one more of Steven Brill’s big ideas.