Digital Paywall Companies Piano Media and Press Plus to Merge

Two of the biggest companies helping news organizations set up digital paywalls merged and hired a former newspaper executive as chief. Piano Media, a three-year-old Slovakian company that helped major European news organizations charge for online content, announced that it had bought Press Plus, its American counterpart. Press Plus was founded by the former Wall Street Journal publisher L. Gordon Crovitz and the journalist Steven Brill to help companies like McClatchy and GateHouse Media set up paywalls. Kelly Leach, who recently resigned as publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, will run the merged company.