The New Yorker is instating a paywall today, after months of offering everything in the magazine for free. Readers will have access to six free articles a month, after which they will need to subscribe. Anything on the website will count towards the six, in effect erasing the distinction (and implicit hierarchy) between ‘web’ pieces and ‘magazine’ pieces, and providing an incentive for the magazine to make all its content equally good.
POLITICO has launched a new website, with four feature stories on its homepage, and a “fully responsive” design that will work on any platform.
The December issue of Wired, out at the end of November, has been guest-edited by Christopher Nolan. The theme: “Time, Space, and Multiple Dimensions.” The regular editors seem a bit star-struck: “Talking with Nolan, one other thing that became abundantly clear is his formidable intellectual curiosity, which ranges from history to mathematics to physics—he even refers to the structure and rule sets of his films as their “geometry.” . . . Our conversations ranged from the famous 1886 book Flatland, about life in a two-dimensional world, to the reasons nothing can travel faster than light.” Next week will be “Christopher Nolan week” on Wired’s website.
Yesterday Obama released a statement about “net neutrality,” arguing that internet service providers should be treated like public utilities and regulated accordingly. The Washington Post has a Q&A with Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who first coined the phrase. And at the Awl, John Herrman attempts a simple definition: net neutrality, he says, “is the idea that there ought to be laws that prevent the large, monopolistic companies that sell internet access from charging different rates for different parts of the internet, either by asking customers to pay extra to access, say, YouTube, or by asking YouTube/Google to pay some sort of fee itself.” This was in reaction to Republican senator Ted Cruz’s tweet that net neutrality “is Obamacare for the Internet.”
Hachette has embraced open-plan offices. When the publisher recently moved to a new space (to avoid higher rents at its old location), it abolished all private offices in favor of cubicles. “Pink noise” is piped in to reduce distraction, and employees have access to handful of conference rooms called “quiet cars.”