Timing is everything, and in the wake of some well-publicized layoffs at content sites (including this one) media watchers may simply be too overcome with skepticism to sample Contentville's wares. A pure content site in this day and age? their silence says. You must be dreaming. Oh, and you're going to charge people for it? (More silence, rolling of eyes.)

"Skepticism is a virtue," declares the cover of Brill's Content, but as with most virtues, a little of it goes a long way.

To be sure, the knives have been out for Contentville ever since Brill announced his intention to join with such heavy hitters as CBS, the Ingram Book Group and the New York Times. Since its launch two years ago, Content, the magazine, has presented itself as the voice of morality in media, calling newspapers, networks, magazines and Web sites on their perceived shortcomings. (Fact-checking is a particular bête noire of Mr. Brill's.) And the magazine has continuously viewed merger mania in the media world with alarm, proscribing the control of information by the few.

But the cavils of Brill's critics seem naive to me. First off, the very existence of entities like AOL Time Warner have made the urge to partner almost a self-preservation instinct. (Have Feed and Suck, which announced this week they were forming something called Automatic Media, sold out? And am I the only one who thinks they should call their new site "Fuck" rather than "Seed"?)

Second, Brill is not hampered by personal relationships. As a former Content staffer told me, "Steve will go after his friends." In the inaugural issue, chairman and CEO Brill lambasted the press for its coverage of the Kenneth Starr investigation; Brill's broad brush tainted many whom he calls friends. It's not likely he's going to cut the New York Times slack in his magazine because it's supplying archived stories to Contentville.

For despite the confusion of names (and Contentville -- which comes to you from the branding minds of Olgilvy and Mather -- is one of the cooler Web site names I've heard in a while), the sites have damned little to do with each other. Yes, Contentville will borrow from Brill's Content when appropriate, but by and large they are separate entities.

The magazine is perking up as new editor David Kuhn breathes some life into its rather humorless bones. (Now it's time for my full disclosure close-up: I have talked to Kuhn and company about writing something for the magazine.) As staff writers were redirected to the Brill's Content site, many chose to brave the New York magazine market instead.

Kuhn's emphasis on more freelance writers (and, so far at least, less "gotcha" stories than the old BC) certainly flies in the face of the original blueprint. From its inception, Content boasted that all food was prepared on the premises. Its staff writers were supposed to be like Eliot Ness' Untouchables: incorruptible, because they served only one master. (Writers were discouraged, and sometimes forbidden, from writing for other publications.)

All of which is interesting, in an academic kind of way, but has little to do with Contentville. The site stands on its own, ready to supply all manner of, well, content to a hungry readership -- at a price.

And there, as the fellow said, is the rub.

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