The blogger and science writer Ed Yong, who seems somehow to have new media in his DNA, continues to invent the future.
Yong had an epiphany early in the year, when he finished a science blog post he liked–a post someone had written for free–and thought to himself, “That’s brilliant. I’d pay good money for that.” It wasn’t the first time he’d had that reaction. Then, in late February, he thought, “Hey, why don’t I pay good money for that?”
For nearly a year now, he’s been doing exactly that:
Throughout the blogosphere, people produce fantastic writing for free. That’s great, but I believe that good writers should get paid for good work. To set an example, I choose ten pieces every month that were written for free and I donate £3 to the author. There are no formal criteria other than I found them unusually interesting, enjoyable and/or important.
What’s more, visitors to Yong’s sight can click on a button alongside his post and send their own donations along to Yong’s picks.
This clever scheme does several things at once. It calls our attention to great posts–Yong is a masterful critic, and I find that his selections are usually well worth my time. It also points the way toward other kinds of yet-to-be-developed pay-as-you-go schemes for readers and writers. And while it doesn’t provide more than token income for writers now, it could give them a bit more in the future, if it catches on. People donate to public radio when they don’t have to; why not do the same for great unpaid writing on the web?
Here are Yong’s picks for November, from his Discover blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science:
- David Tuller for this thorough piece on the tangled history of research into chronic fatigue syndrome.
- Shara Yurkiewicz for a beautiful post about a psychiatric interview.
- Carl Zimmer on whether teaching is a uniquely human behaviour, and on Svante Paabo’sremarkable work on Neanderthals
- Virginia Hughes for a personal take on peering into the minds of minimally conscious patients, and a story of the male birth control pill involving five decades, vitamin A, booze, bad jokes, and a potential compound called “Win”.
- Emily Finke for a wonderful post on finding the spectacular in your own backyard
- Steve Silberman for his story about Susan Kare, the iconic icon-designer who gave computing a human face.
- Patrick Clarkin for his methodical look at the links between poverty, inequality, and obesity
- David Dobbs for this clarion call: “I call on science writers everywhere, writing about behavioral genetics: Do Better.”
- Al Dove for his lovely story about how a baby turtle reaches the sea, featuring Robo-turtle and Blake
- Carin Bondar for her great idea of handing HD flip cameras to field biologists, editing them and shooting her own presenter segments.
Give them a read and see what you think. And if you like what you read, click on one of the pay buttons on Yong’s blog (a little way down the page and on the right) and send the writers a few dollars. We want to encourage this sort of thing.
– Paul Raeburn
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