John Rockwell: June 2010 Archives

Could anyone sketch out the basic original and subsequent business models for successful online general-interest publications like Slate, Salon, Huffington Post, Truthdig and the many others I'm not thinking of? How were they first capitalized? By a single endower or a consortium? How much annually do their endowments/investments spin off to support the publication? What's their current total budget? What additional kinds of earned income do they enjoy? How much are writers paid? And any other relevant questions I'm omitting. Having that kind of information in hand would make any approach to a deep-pocketed philanthropist a lot more grownup-sounding!

Me, I think I side with those commenters who think an online publication is more realistic than a print version. Perhaps, for print, we could generate an annual collection, with rotating editors, on the model of the "Best Music Writing of 200X" series. Entries to be drawn from our own online publication and/or from all over.