Will lobbyists save journalists?

David Boies: I used to be in the government and I'm here to help.

Steven Brill and some buddies revealed today their new company, Journalism Online, that will charge you for all the news you’ve been getting for free on the Internet.

Good luck with that.

The real nut of their press release is revealed below, where they explain how they’re hiring some people with deep connections in Washington’s ways when it comes to burgeoning monopolies:

The company has appointed to its board of advisors New York attorney David Boies and Washington, D.C. attorney Theodore B. Olson, who is also former Solicitor General of the U.S. The law firm of Boies Schiller has been retained to assist in negotiations, as well as to counsel the venture and its publisher members on other legal and regulatory issues.

via Journalism Online.

It sounds like Journalism Online is already afraid of getting slapped with an antitrust charge. Boies was the Chief Counsel of a Senate committee that dealt with antitrust issues, and sued Microsoft successfully for being a monopoly, before the Bush administration dumped the case. Ted Olson, sometimes hinted at as a Supreme Court pick for President Bush, barely needs an introduction.

I’m not sure whether or not news wants to be free, but I know that a lot of news producers don’t want to be bound up in a Ticketmaster-style system that ends up enriching itself at the expense of the entities it claims to represent. I hope JOL doesn’t turn into that, but when I see the antitrust lawyers sitting high on its hog, I really start to wonder.

Bottom line: the old media is starting to decide that its salvation lies in an antitrust exemption from the Justice Department, and that’s better than any bailout a bank could get.