My sense is this — and this may be optimistic — I...

Hi, I'm Rachel Hills.

I'm a London-based (via Sydney, Australia) writer, researcher and contributor to publications including the Sydney Morning Herald's Sunday Life, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Glamour, Jezebel, Alternet and more. I'm also writing a book about Gen Y, sex and identity. This is my blog.

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My sense is this — and this may be optimistic — I think we writers are in for a few bad years, because right now the public is used to getting everything for free. So the magazines are dying and the newspapers are dying and the quality of work is going to decline because nobody has yet figured out how to get the public to pay for quality reporting.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take for the public to say we really miss reading the results of two and three weeks worth of investigative work, and that’s worth paying for. Somebody will figure out a business model to get people to pay for it. Then I think we’re going to be a golden era in journalism. I think it’s going to be spectacular some day.

Former New Yorker writer Dan Baum on the future of journalism

Is it too much to ask for that “some day” to happen within the next five years?

In the long run, though, I tend to agree with Baum. And I think that paying outlets should be using their financial advantage to get the best writing (and writers) on the net into the mags, newspapers and websites - and pay them. So, people don’t want to pay for your product because they can get something comparable or better for free? Hunt those writers down and make your product the best product. Because I think it’s fairly safe to say that most of the people currently writing for free would rather be getting $1 (or 50c) per word for their work.