March 29th, 2012
I hope Chris Hughes is good for the New Republic and if taking down the magazine’s paywall works for them, mazel-mazel. But I found this line about how TNR had to take down the paywall to attract writing talent to be kind of insane:
It’s just under two years since TNR implemented the paywall. A former staffer tells us that “it was unpopular with writers at the time.” Articles were essentially “doomed to obscurity”—even as more people subscribed to read them—because sharing on larger platforms wasn’t possible.
It’s not exactly a surprise that an internet sharing pioneer like Hughes is willing to forgo subscriptions and money in order to get more people reading the magazine. Sharing has become the currency of the Internet, and it’s the thing that makes reporting-for-cheap worthwhile for a lot of writers. We imagine that taking down the paywall will appeal to younger writers who might otherwise pass on working for TNR. And as long as Hughes has money to burn, this sounds like a pretty good idea to us.
Wait–there are young writers out there in the world who are turning down paying gigs at the New Republic because it just doesn’t give them enough exposure? Is this a joke?
Journalism is in a nuclear winter. There are probably 50 aspiring writers for every real-world, paying gig. And every magazine in Washington could easily fill its entire newshole with cheap, over-the-transom freelance copy and never even need paid staff writers. (Let’s hope they don’t figure this out soon . . .)
I’m sure killing the paywall made business sense for TNR in some way. But I’d be really, really surprised if they did it because the labor-supply market for writers is so tight.
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