  It has been established that virial masses for black holes in low-redshift
active galaxies can be estimated from measurements of the optical continuum
strength and the width of the broad Hbeta line. Under various circumstances,
however, both of these quantities can be challenging to measure or can be
subject to large systematic uncertainties. To mitigate these difficulties, we
present a new method for estimating black hole masses. From analysis of a new
sample of broad-line active galactic nuclei, we find that Halpha luminosity
scales almost linearly with optical continuum luminosity and that a strong
correlation exists between Halpha and Hbeta line widths. These two empirical
correlations allow us to translate the standard virial mass system to a new one
based solely on observations of the broad Halpha emission line.
