Lancaster Newspapers is the first US paper to roll out Press+, the web content payment management platform developed by Journalism Online, a company which seeks to help news organizations make money online, paidcontent.org reports.

Lancaster Online, the website for the Intelligencer Journal and Lancaster New Era titles in the US, will use the micropayments platform to paywall its obituaries. Readers outside of Lancaster County will be able to view up to seven obituaries, after which they will have to pay USD 1.99 a month or USD 19.99 for an annual subscription.

Lancaster’s launch of the Journalism Online system will be soon followed by other launches over the summer. According to the same source, two MediaNews projects have already been publicized: Enterprise-Record and the York Daily Record.

Journalism Online was founded in April 2009 by three US media executives and developed the "Press+" payment platform that enables subscribers to access paid content using a universal Journalism Online account. In June 2010, News Corp. purchased a minority stake in Journalism Online, one of the latest moves in News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's campaign to get readers to pay for newspapers online.
Lancaster Newspapers owns and publishes the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era and the Sunday News.