Another brick out of the editorial wall as journalists sell subscriptions

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/oct/18/digital-media-mediabusiness

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In 1990, while editing the Daily Mirror, I found myself embroiled in a bizarre row with the paper's owner, Robert Maxwell (one of many).

Maxwell had demanded that the paper's reporter covering the Gulf War from Dhahran, Bill Akass, should break off from his journalistic duties in order to sell encyclopaedias to the troops.

Akass, in refusing to do so, was supported by me and the rest of the editorial staff. The notion that journalists should engage in the mucky business of commerce was anathema.

We were far too high-minded, for instance, to sell advertising space. The wall between us and the ad department - between editorial and business - had been built many years before.

But the digital revolution is nothing if not disruptive. So that wall is gradually being dismantled brick by brick.

Plenty of journalists who have launched online news start-ups are only too ready to sell ads nowadays - out of necessity in most cases.

Now comes news of a mainstream US-based magazine, The New Republic, where staff have been selling subscriptions.

According to a Forbes report, the magazine's staffers "have been hawking subscriptions to their friends and family members for the past two weeks as part of an intra-office contest."

Management even offered a prize (an iPad mini) to the person signing up the most new readers at the "special friends-and-family rate" of $20 for 20 issues.

The winner was a senior editor, Julia Ioffe, who sold 55 of the 309 total subscriptions generated by the contest.

As Forbes writer Jeff Bercovici points out, making direct appeals to readers for financial support is increasingly common. Crowdfunding has been around for years.

Joe Pompeo, writing on Capital New York, gives a variety of examples of online sites enjoying a measure of success in persuading people to fund journalism.

<em>Sources:</em> Joe Pompeo/Forbes

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