Back when The Atlantic had a lot more poetry in it! (The Atlantic Monthly/Wikimedia Commons)

On Monday freelancer Nate Thayer created a buzz when he made it known that The Atlantic had asked to republish his work without offering to pay him for it. Two days later, Alexis Madrigal, one of the magazine’s senior editors, offers a very long, very personal reply that also turns out to be a meditation on the state of the industry.

Madrigal opens with harrowing details about the depths of his early freelance days, where he was paid $12 for pieces and had to go to the ATM drunk to handle his credit card balance. But he also gives the publications’ side of the freelance story. According to him, it’s not the big publications’ fault that they can’t pay freelancers as much as they’d like to (ostensibly). The economic model for online publications has become equally pressurized.

Madrigal, a digital editor, says they have six options:

1. Write a lot of original pieces.
2. Take partner content.
3. Find people who are willing to write for a small amount of money.
4. Find people who are willing to write for no money.
5. Aggregate like a mug.
6. Rewrite press releases so they look like original content.

Madrigal says he sympathizes most with No. 1 and No. 5, but that digital journalism mores must be taken case by case, as everyone (except the high rollers) is making compromises to keep afloat. His parting shot offers little in the way of consolation:

“Anyway, the biz ain’t what it used to be, but then again, for most people, it never really was. And, to you Mr. Thayer, all I can say is I wish I had a better answer.”

In simpler times… (The Atlantic Monthly/Wikimedia Commons)

Journalist Nate Thayer generated some buzz Tuesday by publishing an exchange he had with an editor at The Atlantic. The editor reportedly wanted to run a version of a story about basketball and U.S.-North Korea relations, which Thayer had already written for NK News. Though Thayer has worked as a journalist for 25 years, the editor at The Atlantic claimed to have no money to pay him or any other freelancers. Instead, the editor touted The Atlantic’s large readership and professional exposure as an incentive.

Thayer declined, because he, like most of us, needs money to pay bills and take care of children. With a publication as large as The Atlantic claiming not to have money in the freelance budget, it would seem the life of a freelance journalist is becoming more and more tenuous and unpredictable.

(Screenshot of Visual Revenue website logo)

Analytics firm Visual Revenue is offering services to big-time news outlets like The Atlantic and USA Today to help them determine the best ways to use their online presences. According to Nieman Journalism Lab, news organizations with specific personalities develop specific needs in their publishing and social media strategies.

“Even fantastic content can die if you don’t put it out right,” Visual Revenue CEO Dennis Mortensen told Adrienne LaFrance. “The Atlantic can put out content from four o’clock in the afternoon to nine in the evening and it’s equally powerful. It is very much property-specific. I can’t take my learning from The Atlantic and copy over to the Economist.”

LaFrance says that one thing remains constant for all publications: “tweeting more is better than not tweeting enough but tweeting all at once is worse than not tweeting at all.”

Visual Revenue uses editorial information provided by publications and inputs it into an algorithm that objectively determines optimal tweet and publishing timing. The robotic element, they say, makes the publication as productive as possible. Mortensen said that before The New York Daily News began using Visual Revenue, it was putting new content on its homepage about 80 times a day. Now it updates 160 times a day.