Compass Cultura
Thanks for your subscription, Jeff! We appreciate it. And thanks for spreading the word. If you ever have any questions or concerns, let me know personally.
Haha. Agreed. They can as well. I better watch it though, I'm drawing too many lines in the sand here.
I totally agree with you on the publisher front, Stuart. On the advertising front though, I'm not sure. Currently, yes, it is a principal way for sites to remain free to readers and I don't think that will ever really go away (of course, the longer it persists, the more Banner Blindness becomes an issue and ad revenue continues to fall) But if someone gave me a choice between an internet with banner ads and an internet without, I would choose without. And if that is the sort of online experience that some people prefer, than we need to work toward it. I don't know that I've ever really been exposed to an online advertisement and thought to myself I'm glad that's there.
And about ads as a failing business? Slate would't be the first outlet to recognize a drop in online ad revenue. Derek Thompson actually wrote a great article in The Atlantic about this trend. In his words: "It's not a pretty picture." People just aren't clicking on banner ads as much as marketers hoped they would. I'm not sure why a publisher would erect a paywall and annoy/alienate a large chunk of their readership if not for the fact that the well is runnin' a bit dryer than it used to (the well being, of course, the advertisers).
Great find, Matthew. Pretty interesting venture. There are quite a few 'back this writer' initiatives out there (like the Beacon which you mentioned in your posting, and even things like Patreon), but I've never really come across one that 'clicked'. Contributoria comes close. The name's a mouthful though&..
Hey Stuart. Tinypass is a pretty great option. Bklynr uses them. The one major issue I find with Tinypass though is it requires you to create a Tinypass user account in addition to an account on the website you want to read. It's kind of messy. We looked at Tinypass before building a different kind of metered paywall for Compass Cultura cause I really wanted the payment and account process to feel as native and 'baked-in' to the site as possible. Tinypass kind of feels like it takes you out of the experience briefly. Though they do offer some seriously diverse payment options. I think they even support Bitcoin now, which is something we have to figure out how to do with Compass pronto.
Haha. Thanks, Matthew! Every once in a while, when I am bummed about not getting any good mag commissions, I like to write these fictional magazine dispatches from the near future. No idea why. Earlier this year, I trekked through the High Atlas Mountains outside Marrakech. We trekked for four nights. Had private sherpas and camel drivers and camped every night beneath the milky way. But many people had written about the same trek. So I wanted to change the story up a bit.
Anyhow, if you really liked the 'fictional narrative non-fiction from the future', check out the first one I wrote here: Respect Is Burning.
I read this the second it went live. I've been following and enjoying Caroline's "Little Magazines' series on Neiman Lab. But, for me, the article/interview read as a "When I was your age, I had to walk to school& uphill& both ways& in the snow& barefoot" kind of piece. Clearly Rose has an immense level of industry expertise and publishing intuition but what he posses in pragmatism, he lacks in farsightedness.
That said, I found some extremely useful bits of information in the interview. Publishing industry standards that I, as one of the types of publishers that Rose rails against, had no idea even existed. Things like Subscription Liabilities. Overall, I think Rose has a great mind for publishing but he's still playing the short game. He's been around a whilehe'll be long retired by the time the industry becomes wholly unrecognizable to print-hardened veterans like himself.
Thanks for sharing this, Sonja. We're playing around with the idea of having a blog on Medium dedicated to showcasing the beautiful photography and videography that we tend not to feature on our main website. Soon, we'll start featuring more exclusive works from photo journalists and travellers. This NatGeo contest post was kind of an ice-breaker. Would love to hear your thoughts as it develops.
The first time I read this article, it totally blew me away. It's honest, passionate, poetic and haunting. It's what I look for in modern journalism. We are incredibly be proud to be publishing it on Compass. I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the piece.
I've certainly been vocal about the future of travel publishing and the rising trend of paying for quality content. And my views haven't changed much. I think, in general, the shitty travel writing out there will continue to get even shittier and the quality travel writing will continue to improvealong with the many ways to consume that quality content.
But, for me, the future also rests on journalists and writers having a voice, an opinion. And when the agendas of corporate brands begin to leak into the voice of the journalist, I believe, the bottom falls out. There have been cases of well-executed branded content, Stuart (@travelfish) mentioned Red Bull and I have to agree. They (used to?) produce a really solid, informative magazine about lifestyles on the edge. Of course, their brand was ever-present. But to me it felt a little more genuine than a company simply paying to sponsor an article on a peripheral website.
At the end of the day, once blurred, the lines between honest journalism/blogging and advertising tend to be ubiquitously abused. If CNN can't even pull it off, I don't trust untrained and underpaid bloggers to pull it off either.
At Compass Cultura, we've been working with some great aspiring journalists from India and Eastern Europe who have made the decision to work primarily in the English Language. We're excited about the talent that seems to be coming from further afield. The times ahead are exciting, but also increasingly fragile. Honesty, respect for readers and skepticism towards native advertising will be virtues that will save the future of travel writing.
Thanks for sharing this, Matthew!!!! Would love to hear everyone's thoughts on thisas the writer and as the publisher.
Have always loved John's description of Native Ads.
Hey Jeff!!! Just came across your comment now. I really should be logging into Outbounding more often. A New Year's resolution, perhaps...
Thanks so much for the kind words. Really glad you liked the article.
Here's to pushing the boundaries in 2015!!
This is a great thread!
Jeff here, founder of Compass Cultura. I think what's important to keep in mind here is that we are in a major shift between two online worlds. We are all used to the internet of the past ten years: the wild west, the frontier town where anything goes and everything is ours for the taking. Free. No strings attached. This of course was made possible by major corporations (who probably had no idea what the internet actually was, or what it was capable of) pouring dump trucks full of money into online advertising. Everyone was getting paid, sort of, and the only people laying out money were CEOs. Now, online advertising is failing as an industry. That world is running out of steam, dying. Think of it as a mini-bubble-burst. Major media outlets are turning to paywalls to recover the ad losses. Slate is a perfect example of this. There have been many others, and there will be many more. We're slowly getting to know this new online world. A place where some things are free and some things are paid for. And as more and more major publishers continue to put content in the 'paid for' pile, outlets like The Atavist, Bklynr and yes, Compass Cultura (*wink) will grow in the process.
For me, more so as a freelance journalist than as the founder of Compass, the most important thing to remember during this shift between worlds is integrity. A focus on sophisticated, dynamic and pleasurable reading. Respect the readers. Respect the writers. Fuck the advertisers. I'm not saying everyone should be subscribing to content online. That would be like saying everyone should have had hard copy magazine subscriptions for the past fifty years. It may not be for everyone. But it is for some people. A lot of people, I think. And as the web becomes more 'marketplace' and less 'dump', those people will find the content they want and it will be better than ever before.
Rumor has it that Issue #2 of Compass Cultura is going to be pretty darn good&.