making journalists pay for editorial space?

Club-Mate: drink of hackersI’m with Tyler Brule here on the Eurostar – it is the Right Time to Change Track. What’s more interesting is a comment from Boswell:

Here’s another, shameless open ended business pitch Mr. Brûlé’s main business, Winkreative — it will be interesting to see which of the companies referenced here becomes his next client. Note to FT: I hope you are not actually paying this guy for his column given that he derives millions in new business from it all day long. Perhap’s he should be paying you — a wonderful new metric for the publishing industry whereby the “journalists” pay the newspaper for editorial space so that they may attract new business for their consulting firms, etc.

There are many journalists that become names themselves. This must be true since Google’s also launched an Author Rank. Its true for Tyler Brule. Its true for Paul Carr (nsfwcorp). Its true for Sarah Lacy (pandodaily). The list can go on.

I don’t know how many journalists also have consulting firms or do other things besides just writing/freelancing.

What about pundits? I know many pundits in the tech space that act as advisors, board members, etc. thanks to their published writing in tech press. They gain monetarily out of their writing, so why not make them pay to get published?

It is definitely a novel idea for the fledgling media industry to get paid by journalists who also get a regular soapbox.


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