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Award-Winning Nautilus Enters Rough Waters

254 points by r721 10y ago

zajd 10y ago
Love Nautilus, it's a shame they aren't doing well. Wonder what their subscriber count is.
- qubex 10y ago
  Whatever it is, it isn't enough.
  - Ixiaus 10y ago
    Or they aren't charging enough.
  - okreallywtf 10y ago
    Lets see what we can do about that! I think I've heard their name but I don't know anyone that subscribes but I'm interested now, my guess is with the vast amounts of stuff to read out there its hard for quality to shine entirely on its own. Especially when clickbait is so much more appealing to some people. I think it has become more clear to people that quality journalism (science and otherwise) is not going to be free so the glut of free media might be subsiding some (I know I pay for a lot more media than I ever used to). I'll subscribe and hawk it on my various social media outlets.
  - qubex 10y ago
    I'm quite surprised by the merciless downvote: all I meant to indicate is that however many subscribers they have, it clearly (a) isn't enough to sustain them financially and (b) would be better for scientific literacy if a wider reader base were extant. Anyway, I've subscribed. Overseas subscriptions are surprisingly expensive on account of the international shipping, but I like print.
- almostApatriot1 10y ago
  if my order number indicates anything, its not higher than the low 30K's.
itcrowd 10y ago
At the time of writing this, a subscription for one year is 30$ for a bi-monthly magazine. I would love it if it was once a month (for double the price), however, shipping to Europe seems to cost another 30$ per year. I understand the cost of international shipping and will consider it, but at first glance it sounds a bit steep. There's also no student discount, which is also understandable but a pity. That said, I do love reading their pieces and it makes me sad that they're in financial trouble. Note: I read the content online now, but would greatly prefer paper. I subscribe to the Economist and a national opinion magazine. A digital subscription is just not my style (for now, who knows what the future will bring..). To all writers and editors: keep up the good work. Quality publication. Hope to hear more about the AAAS deal!
- m_fayer 10y ago
  Yep. I feel the same about both paper and EU shipping. I would currently have subscriptions to a good 5 English-language magazines that I currently don't have subscriptions to, because the shipping surcharge makes the price unreasonable. I really hope that this is some obscure tangle that, when solved, will really help some of these publications prosper and make some happy readers here on the continent.
- mavhc 10y ago
  Why isn't there a company that will print and deliver locally?
  - chki 10y ago
    The demand is probably too low, especially if you consider that Europe is itself quite big which means producing in some central country like Germany will only reduce the international shipping costs but not eliminate them.
andrewvc 10y ago
I just signed up for Nautilus prime after reading this. http://shop.nautil.us http://shop.nautil.us
- self_assembly 10y ago
  Me too! I've always been incredibly impressed by the quality of their publications.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- keithpeter 10y ago
  I had already taken out a subscription a few days ago after reading the Cormac McCarthy piece. My immediate reaction was to cancel my subscription and explain why (I have been a freelance teacher in the past and had to chivvy for payment) but I am now thinking it over. Perhaps we should monitor the quality of the articles closely.
faitswulff 10y ago
This explains their recent uptick in requests for donations. I bought a print+digital subscription a few weeks ago because emails from Nautilus have been the ones that I've most looked forward to lately.
bpodgursky 10y ago
Whew. From the title, I thought I was going to lose my file browser.
dkh 10y ago
This is a real shame. Nautilus is without a doubt the most consistently interesting and high-quality publication I read. I have just renewed my Prime membership, and hope others do the same. (Or that they get the investment they need and deserve.)
- ethbro 10y ago
  I did the same a few weeks ago, but mostly because I realized "I read a lot of Nautilus articles through HN, and every one has been excellent." A subscription isn't that expensive, and part of making the world you want to live in (one with greater scientific literacy) is putting your money where your mouth is...
- cs702 10y ago
  I just subscribed, and hope they do whatever it will take to fix their operations-and-author-mismanagement issues. FWIW, you can also donate at: http://www.nautilusthink.org/donate http://www.nautilusthink.org/donate
  - nemild 10y ago
    One thing that's a bit weird is that the donate link is not over SSL (and it says Powered by Stripe).
    - mattkrause 10y ago
      Perhaps it's changed, but right now that page just collects your donation amount and redirects you to an (SSL-protected) paypal page where you provide the actual payment details. I suppose the first page might leak the amount of your donation, but nothing that's very sensitive.
- ori_b 10y ago
  > Or that they get the investment they need and deserve. From what is said in the article, they are getting the investment that they need, but things are moving slowly. I don't know how true that is, but I want to believe.
DIVx0 10y ago
Its been a long time since i've subscribed to a magazine but I have always enjoyed reading Nautilus articles. $29 for print and digital is a steal for the quality of content they produce.
subpixel 10y ago
I'm a lapsed Nautilus subscriber and in my opinion the world doesn't need a "Paris Review for science" (what I liken Nautilus to) as much as it needs a "BuzzFeed for science" or even a "USA Today for science. That is, reach and impact should be much higher priorities than prestige and design awards.
- js2 10y ago
  Science News has been published since 1922. The print edition is bi-weekly. https://www.sciencenews.org/about-science-news https://www.sciencenews.org/about-science-news
Xcelerate 10y ago
Just canceled my NYT membership and subscribed to the print edition of Nautilus. A few months ago I went to the NYT homepage and every top article had "Trump" somewhere in the title. I have a threshold for how much political blather I can stand, and Nautilus is like a breath of fresh air from that.
- dsharlet 10y ago
  As much as I can't stand it either, Trump is the president of the US, and making a lot of waves. It's not surprising that he is dominating the news, and it's not just "political blather".
  - Xcelerate 10y ago
    It has nothing to do with Trump in particular — it's that they pick a topic and just drive it into the ground with the same news rehashed in eight different ways.
    - ShannonAlther 10y ago
      The problem is that every third sentence out of the president's mouth is so disconnected from reality that it boggles the mind. If Obama, Bush, or Clinton had said even a few of the things that Trump has it would have made headlines for weeks. Every last drop of it is newsworthy, but in all it's become a flood.
      - rifung 10y ago
        While I don't disagree, at this point it's not news that the President says things which are not based in reality. I'd rather they just publish a piece every month to gather them up for those interested and publish more articles focused on what he actually did than what he said because frankly he doesn't really follow through on what he says anyway. If anything I feel like the focus on what he says is just distracting people from the more important news which is what he's doing.
    - 10y ago
johnnydoe9 10y ago
Just recently discovered Nautilus and it is really high quality stuff, I think I'll get a premium membership too after reading the Cormac McCarthy issue.
danielhooper 10y ago
Am I being cynical or is this just an ad? Every other person is cancelling their subscription to NYT from a piece that went up yesterday, and now this shows up on the front page of HN the day after?
- qwert-e 10y ago
  What NYT piece are you referring to?
  - thesumofall 10y ago
    I guess: http://www.businessinsider.de/bret-stephens-new-york-times-climate-change-article-subscriptions-canceled-op-ed-2017-4?r=US&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.de/bret-stephens-new-york-times-c...
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      That's very entertaining. I wonder what other sort of guest editorial could prompt such a reaction? Probably not the best business move for NYT, to further explore that question...
    - qwert-e 10y ago
      I saw one person who claims to have cancelled their subscription. The rest of the embedded tweets are either threatening to cancel or justifying "why they cancelled" (before the op-ed). Makes you wonder who these furiously cancelling people are and whether Business Insider bothered to reach them for comment.
- r721 10y ago
  To be fair, the discussion on Twitter (where I got the link from) is mostly about "unpaid freelancers" part: https://twitter.com/robinhenig/status/858347023308910596 https://twitter.com/robinhenig/status/858347023308910596 https://twitter.com/mslopatto/status/858354324425949184 https://twitter.com/mslopatto/status/858354324425949184 https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/858309371612286976 https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/858309371612286976
Freelancer2017 10y ago
I do sympathise with Nautilus and want them to succeed. But I am a freelancer who has not been paid by them for eight months now. A longform piece takes weeks to write. Interviewees gave their time so generously to me. And I was ridiculously excited to write for a publication I respected so much. I had no idea that nautilus were still commissioning features when they knew they had no guaranteed income stream to pay their writers. When nautilus ran into serious financial trouble they did not publish many of the articles they had commissioned, mine included - this meant that they would only have to offer a much smaller kill fee for these unpublished pieces. I am waiting for this fee (and am aware of several others writers in this situation). But we didn't know the pieces would never be published. We were never told. Instead the promised nautilus issue emerged that day, we told our friends, we scanned the pages with genuine excitement, and our features were absolutely nowhere to be seen. Emails to the editor (naive, perfectly friendly emails) went unanswered for weeks. I actually honestly wouldn't have minded as much if they were up front last year and said look, we just don't have the money, we messed up, we're sorry. They're a publication I truly want to survive regardless of my input. But I'm a freelancer and that promised money was going to see me through Christmas. They should not have been actively commissioning when they did not have the means to pay. It was also really humiliating to email them for weeks to ask where our articles had gone. Why not reply honestly to us at the outset? Christmas came and went. I couldn't afford presents for my family. I lost the chance to submit elsewhere because it was a time-sensitive piece. I had to apologise to my interviewees who I bet won't be so generous with their time the next time a writer approaches them. They've been burnt, too. And even now (in the last week) nautilus have told me they're about to merge with AAAS and so we'll all get paid. But it's clear from the Undark piece that this is not true. Sometimes magazines run into problems. I get that. I feel bad about it. But then don't commission pieces when you know there's no money to pay freelancers whose livelihoods depend on each and every word they write. We actually get paid by the word! Don't humiliate writers by making them beg for checks for weeks of work. And don't promise a merger is imminent with a big science institution when that big science institution will deny it. Good on Undark for this piece. And congratulations to the many fantastic science magazines who do the industry proud.
xor1 10y ago
I would love to know more about the person behind and responsible for screwing over the writers.
danielparks 10y ago
Does the print edition contain ads?
- danielparks 10y ago
  Nautilus customer service: “Not commercial ads, but it does feature a few science organizations or sponsors.”
cookiecaper 10y ago
>Steele, a former television journalist, started Nautilus in 2012 with a two-year, $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based philanthropy that describes itself as targeting the world’s “big questions” in science, religion, and philosophy. That money, supplemented with an additional $2.1 million from Templeton, was the main funding source for Nautilus in the run-up to publication, and during its first two years in print. But the Templeton Foundation typically reduces support for startup ventures after the first three years, and, accordingly, it has dialed back funding for Nautilus, although it gave the magazine an additional $1.25 million in 2015, and a little more than $1.2 million last year. Another business wholly dependent on investor patronage. We need to examine how we can continue to crowdsource legitimate cultural and creative endeavors. It seems that we're backpedaling to a medieval system, where science and art could only be done when bankrolled by a wealthy patron, whom the scientist/artist would have to accommodate if they expected the patronage to continue. [The dependence on corporate sponsors is really a form of this too, and as paying subscribers have evaporated, these have become ever-more-crucial.] Stringent copyright regimes have only brought us heavily sanitized, commercialized, vacuous media. I would argue loosening this would benefit most small writers and publishers. At the very least, limiting copyright terms and keeping some culturally relevant icons in the public domain would be a huge boon. For example, imagine if someone besides Disney could benefit commercially from the Star Wars franchise, which was originally released 40 years ago. Isn't that long enough for its creators to have had exclusive control? Something like a web-based micropayment service that dispensed monies based on time spent reading/enjoying would be useful, but it's hard to get everyone on board. I know there have been a couple of HN'ers who've made a pass at it, but to this point, nothing has stuck.
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  There should be a physical graveyard devoted enterprises that have attempted to solve this problem. I agree with you, but I'm not holding my breath.
apathy 10y ago
The sole comment as of 11:26AM PDT, April 29th, 2017, is devastating. It suggests that science journalism is fucked. I'm going to poll a few friends that do freelance work for Nature & Science to see if this is the general consensus.
- Cyphase 10y ago
  Here's the comment for anyone who's curious, posted by "Adam" on "04.29.2017 @1:19 PM" (I'm guessing EDT): > Science journalism is basically dead as a thing. Many of the top publications pay late or not at all. The rates for freelancers is consistently low and the expectations are high and getting higher. Other than a very small number of high performers, this is not a job and the best that most can expect is to be scraping by as a freelancer. Understandably, many simply stop doing it.
anigbrowl 10y ago
Computers accelerate information exchange, and so much of capitalism is based on the latter. This means huge rewards for those who aim at the popular taste...but the popular taste is very much the lowest common denominator of our cultural data sets. And while it's entirely right to aim at that, our accelerated capitalist system does not do so well with steadily financing things which aim above that. This might be because economic models pursue equilibria of supply and demand, but just as there is a lowest common denominator of both there is also a highest common factor of which economic models take no account, and therefore under-finance.
Animats 10y ago
The current issue is headed "Consciousness". Groan. That's been discussed to death in the AI community, with little result.
programd 10y ago
One of the problems is that they're shipping dead trees. No way is this economically sustainable these days. They should have gone all digital and raised their prices long ago. Let's do some math - how many subscribers do they need to break even if they pare down staff, go all digital, and raise their price a bit? Hand-wavy numbers for minimal viable staffing, but should be order of magnitude correct: $ 600,000 Freelancers, $5K per article, 20 articles/issue, 6 issues/year $ 200,000 2 editorial $ 100,000 1 marketing person, online marketing savvy $ 100,000 2 support staff (clerical, PA, etc) $ 200,000 2 management/fundraising/operations staff $ 100,000 1 webmaster/IT person $ 100,000 outsourced services (HR, payroll, website hosting, etc) $1,400,000 annual burn rate assuming a minimal staff to run just the online magazine and dump print (I acknowledge they have other expenses, but let's ignore them for now) If you charge $60 for an annual subscription - very reasonable for the content - they would need 23333.33 subscribers to break even. They got $1.2 million last year in grants, some $9.5 million in funding since 2012. If they can't manage to attract 24K subscribers with that kind of funding they don't deserve to stay in business no matter how good their content is. I love their content, but they need somebody who knows how to run a business to be in charge.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  But look, there's a bigger problem here. Maybe they can't get 34k subscribers because it's hard to get people to cough up $60 a year, have all their subscription data resold yadda yadda. You say the problem is dead-tree publishing but I don't think the additional layout and printing costs are so much bigger than what you've outlined above. They're trying to cut costs by not paying the people who actually produce the content (as opposed to those who package it through the editorial function); their other alternative is to produce more popular content that would attract more ad revenue, but that would mean a loss of quality because markets don't always reward quality. This is, literally, why we can't have nice things.
  - kebolio 10y ago
    Capitalism is why we can't have nice things in the first place. Capitalism precludes news media from reporting fairly and accurately rather than pander to their advertisers. Another example: want cheap fast internet? Too expensive to run fibre even though these corporations are making profits that run into billions and none of the US giants will have this so-called "common carrier" policy.
Jerry2 10y ago
I just subscribed. It's one of my favorite mags I read all the time and I was introduced to it by HN. Had no idea they were struggling. I hope more subscribe and I hope it survives.
literallycancer 10y ago
Great, maybe now we can some content that is not funded by a religious lobby, for a change? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation#Cont...
hackuser 10y ago
> started Nautilus in 2012 with a two-year, $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation That's very interesting and important. I know the Templeton Foundation as funders of 'research' into creationism. Richard Dawkins, for example, is apparently a critic of theirs and refused to participate in a project of theirs. The Templeton Foundation's Wikipedia page tells some other interesting stories with names you may recognize (with the caveat that it is Wikipedia). I wonder what influence they have on Nautilus. It's a genuine question; the world isn't black and white, Templeton is not evil, and I don't know their current level of funding for Nautilus - perhaps they could use more Templeton money. OTOH, funders can have subtle influence in many ways, from story selection to self-censorship. EDIT: Oops, should have kept reading to answer one of my questions: "[The Templeton Foundation] has dialed back funding for Nautilus, although it gave the magazine an additional $1.25 million in 2015, and a little more than $1.2 million last year"
chis 10y ago
Just subscribed. 14$ a year seems way too cheap, but maybe they've run some numbers on it
nsainsbury 10y ago
I used to be a subscriber to Nautilus and initially loved their work. Over time however I've drifted away primarily because I've come to feel a lot of their articles are popularisations of the the sort of low quality "science" you see regularly make its way to HN (before getting ripped apart in the comments). Specifically, articles based on non-reproducible, low N, p-hacked studies from fields like psychology, social science, neuroscience, etc. As the replication crisis wreaks havoc and meta-studies continue to reveal major structural issues with work in these fields, I just can't bring myself to read Nautilus anymore.
- vijayr 10y ago
  Most of the comments here are positive (from my limited reading, I like Nautilus too, no affiliation). I'm just curious - can you give a few examples of the articles you didn't like?
sandis 10y ago
That's sad to hear. Has to be my favorite publication. I subscribe to the digital edition, and, while visiting Los Angeles, bought a print copy at Barnes & Noble. I did ask whether they carry older issues and unfortunately the answer was no.
rvijapurapu 10y ago
Thanks for posting this story, I loved reading Nautilus articles. Today I've decided to do something about supporting them - I have purchased their Prime Membership. I wish more of us can do the same.
slackingoff2017 10y ago
I used to work in the "content generation" sphere. There are two tangible things that humans love to generate for free, art and writing. These things on their own are almost always monetarily worthless even if their worth to society is huge. The reason is that most people, like us here on this board, willingly produce creative writing for free. The only money in content is advertising since humans need some coaxing to produce it. This is resulting in companies that focus on content being controlled by advertisers behind the scenes. These days it's simple to get "paid placement" almost anywhere with zero mention that the content is sponsored. This also explains why the best articles seem to come out of companies that don't sell writing. Google employees and the like are putting out research and case studies for fun, labors of love.
Heliosmaster 10y ago
If only their printed version wasn't so expensive here in Europe for the shipping...

254 points by r721 10y ago

zajd 10y ago

Love Nautilus, it's a shame they aren't doing well. Wonder what their subscriber count is.

qubex 10y ago
Whatever it is, it isn't enough.
- Ixiaus 10y ago
  Or they aren't charging enough.
- okreallywtf 10y ago
  Lets see what we can do about that! I think I've heard their name but I don't know anyone that subscribes but I'm interested now, my guess is with the vast amounts of stuff to read out there its hard for quality to shine entirely on its own. Especially when clickbait is so much more appealing to some people. I think it has become more clear to people that quality journalism (science and otherwise) is not going to be free so the glut of free media might be subsiding some (I know I pay for a lot more media than I ever used to). I'll subscribe and hawk it on my various social media outlets.
- qubex 10y ago
  I'm quite surprised by the merciless downvote: all I meant to indicate is that however many subscribers they have, it clearly (a) isn't enough to sustain them financially and (b) would be better for scientific literacy if a wider reader base were extant. Anyway, I've subscribed. Overseas subscriptions are surprisingly expensive on account of the international shipping, but I like print.
almostApatriot1 10y ago
if my order number indicates anything, its not higher than the low 30K's.

itcrowd 10y ago

At the time of writing this, a subscription for one year is 30$ for a bi-monthly magazine. I would love it if it was once a month (for double the price), however, shipping to Europe seems to cost another 30$ per year. I understand the cost of international shipping and will consider it, but at first glance it sounds a bit steep. There's also no student discount, which is also understandable but a pity. That said, I do love reading their pieces and it makes me sad that they're in financial trouble. Note: I read the content online now, but would greatly prefer paper. I subscribe to the Economist and a national opinion magazine. A digital subscription is just not my style (for now, who knows what the future will bring..). To all writers and editors: keep up the good work. Quality publication. Hope to hear more about the AAAS deal!

m_fayer 10y ago
Yep. I feel the same about both paper and EU shipping. I would currently have subscriptions to a good 5 English-language magazines that I currently don't have subscriptions to, because the shipping surcharge makes the price unreasonable. I really hope that this is some obscure tangle that, when solved, will really help some of these publications prosper and make some happy readers here on the continent.
mavhc 10y ago
Why isn't there a company that will print and deliver locally?
- chki 10y ago
  The demand is probably too low, especially if you consider that Europe is itself quite big which means producing in some central country like Germany will only reduce the international shipping costs but not eliminate them.

andrewvc 10y ago

I just signed up for Nautilus prime after reading this. http://shop.nautil.us http://shop.nautil.us

self_assembly 10y ago
Me too! I've always been incredibly impressed by the quality of their publications.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
keithpeter 10y ago
I had already taken out a subscription a few days ago after reading the Cormac McCarthy piece. My immediate reaction was to cancel my subscription and explain why (I have been a freelance teacher in the past and had to chivvy for payment) but I am now thinking it over. Perhaps we should monitor the quality of the articles closely.

faitswulff 10y ago

This explains their recent uptick in requests for donations. I bought a print+digital subscription a few weeks ago because emails from Nautilus have been the ones that I've most looked forward to lately.

bpodgursky 10y ago

Whew. From the title, I thought I was going to lose my file browser.

dkh 10y ago

This is a real shame. Nautilus is without a doubt the most consistently interesting and high-quality publication I read. I have just renewed my Prime membership, and hope others do the same. (Or that they get the investment they need and deserve.)

ethbro 10y ago
I did the same a few weeks ago, but mostly because I realized "I read a lot of Nautilus articles through HN, and every one has been excellent." A subscription isn't that expensive, and part of making the world you want to live in (one with greater scientific literacy) is putting your money where your mouth is...
cs702 10y ago
I just subscribed, and hope they do whatever it will take to fix their operations-and-author-mismanagement issues. FWIW, you can also donate at: http://www.nautilusthink.org/donate http://www.nautilusthink.org/donate
- nemild 10y ago
  One thing that's a bit weird is that the donate link is not over SSL (and it says Powered by Stripe).
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    Perhaps it's changed, but right now that page just collects your donation amount and redirects you to an (SSL-protected) paypal page where you provide the actual payment details. I suppose the first page might leak the amount of your donation, but nothing that's very sensitive.
ori_b 10y ago
> Or that they get the investment they need and deserve. From what is said in the article, they are getting the investment that they need, but things are moving slowly. I don't know how true that is, but I want to believe.

DIVx0 10y ago

Its been a long time since i've subscribed to a magazine but I have always enjoyed reading Nautilus articles. $29 for print and digital is a steal for the quality of content they produce.

subpixel 10y ago

I'm a lapsed Nautilus subscriber and in my opinion the world doesn't need a "Paris Review for science" (what I liken Nautilus to) as much as it needs a "BuzzFeed for science" or even a "USA Today for science. That is, reach and impact should be much higher priorities than prestige and design awards.

js2 10y ago
Science News has been published since 1922. The print edition is bi-weekly. https://www.sciencenews.org/about-science-news https://www.sciencenews.org/about-science-news

Xcelerate 10y ago

Just canceled my NYT membership and subscribed to the print edition of Nautilus. A few months ago I went to the NYT homepage and every top article had "Trump" somewhere in the title. I have a threshold for how much political blather I can stand, and Nautilus is like a breath of fresh air from that.

dsharlet 10y ago
As much as I can't stand it either, Trump is the president of the US, and making a lot of waves. It's not surprising that he is dominating the news, and it's not just "political blather".
- Xcelerate 10y ago
  It has nothing to do with Trump in particular — it's that they pick a topic and just drive it into the ground with the same news rehashed in eight different ways.
  - ShannonAlther 10y ago
    The problem is that every third sentence out of the president's mouth is so disconnected from reality that it boggles the mind. If Obama, Bush, or Clinton had said even a few of the things that Trump has it would have made headlines for weeks. Every last drop of it is newsworthy, but in all it's become a flood.
    - rifung 10y ago
      While I don't disagree, at this point it's not news that the President says things which are not based in reality. I'd rather they just publish a piece every month to gather them up for those interested and publish more articles focused on what he actually did than what he said because frankly he doesn't really follow through on what he says anyway. If anything I feel like the focus on what he says is just distracting people from the more important news which is what he's doing.
  - 10y ago

johnnydoe9 10y ago

Just recently discovered Nautilus and it is really high quality stuff, I think I'll get a premium membership too after reading the Cormac McCarthy issue.

danielhooper 10y ago

Am I being cynical or is this just an ad? Every other person is cancelling their subscription to NYT from a piece that went up yesterday, and now this shows up on the front page of HN the day after?

qwert-e 10y ago
What NYT piece are you referring to?
- thesumofall 10y ago
  I guess: http://www.businessinsider.de/bret-stephens-new-york-times-climate-change-article-subscriptions-canceled-op-ed-2017-4?r=US&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.de/bret-stephens-new-york-times-c...
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    That's very entertaining. I wonder what other sort of guest editorial could prompt such a reaction? Probably not the best business move for NYT, to further explore that question...
  - qwert-e 10y ago
    I saw one person who claims to have cancelled their subscription. The rest of the embedded tweets are either threatening to cancel or justifying "why they cancelled" (before the op-ed). Makes you wonder who these furiously cancelling people are and whether Business Insider bothered to reach them for comment.
r721 10y ago
To be fair, the discussion on Twitter (where I got the link from) is mostly about "unpaid freelancers" part: https://twitter.com/robinhenig/status/858347023308910596 https://twitter.com/robinhenig/status/858347023308910596 https://twitter.com/mslopatto/status/858354324425949184 https://twitter.com/mslopatto/status/858354324425949184 https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/858309371612286976 https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/858309371612286976

Freelancer2017 10y ago

I do sympathise with Nautilus and want them to succeed. But I am a freelancer who has not been paid by them for eight months now. A longform piece takes weeks to write. Interviewees gave their time so generously to me. And I was ridiculously excited to write for a publication I respected so much. I had no idea that nautilus were still commissioning features when they knew they had no guaranteed income stream to pay their writers. When nautilus ran into serious financial trouble they did not publish many of the articles they had commissioned, mine included - this meant that they would only have to offer a much smaller kill fee for these unpublished pieces. I am waiting for this fee (and am aware of several others writers in this situation). But we didn't know the pieces would never be published. We were never told. Instead the promised nautilus issue emerged that day, we told our friends, we scanned the pages with genuine excitement, and our features were absolutely nowhere to be seen. Emails to the editor (naive, perfectly friendly emails) went unanswered for weeks. I actually honestly wouldn't have minded as much if they were up front last year and said look, we just don't have the money, we messed up, we're sorry. They're a publication I truly want to survive regardless of my input. But I'm a freelancer and that promised money was going to see me through Christmas. They should not have been actively commissioning when they did not have the means to pay. It was also really humiliating to email them for weeks to ask where our articles had gone. Why not reply honestly to us at the outset? Christmas came and went. I couldn't afford presents for my family. I lost the chance to submit elsewhere because it was a time-sensitive piece. I had to apologise to my interviewees who I bet won't be so generous with their time the next time a writer approaches them. They've been burnt, too. And even now (in the last week) nautilus have told me they're about to merge with AAAS and so we'll all get paid. But it's clear from the Undark piece that this is not true. Sometimes magazines run into problems. I get that. I feel bad about it. But then don't commission pieces when you know there's no money to pay freelancers whose livelihoods depend on each and every word they write. We actually get paid by the word! Don't humiliate writers by making them beg for checks for weeks of work. And don't promise a merger is imminent with a big science institution when that big science institution will deny it. Good on Undark for this piece. And congratulations to the many fantastic science magazines who do the industry proud.

xor1 10y ago

I would love to know more about the person behind and responsible for screwing over the writers.

danielparks 10y ago

Does the print edition contain ads?

danielparks 10y ago
Nautilus customer service: “Not commercial ads, but it does feature a few science organizations or sponsors.”

cookiecaper 10y ago

>Steele, a former television journalist, started Nautilus in 2012 with a two-year, $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based philanthropy that describes itself as targeting the world’s “big questions” in science, religion, and philosophy. That money, supplemented with an additional $2.1 million from Templeton, was the main funding source for Nautilus in the run-up to publication, and during its first two years in print. But the Templeton Foundation typically reduces support for startup ventures after the first three years, and, accordingly, it has dialed back funding for Nautilus, although it gave the magazine an additional $1.25 million in 2015, and a little more than $1.2 million last year. Another business wholly dependent on investor patronage. We need to examine how we can continue to crowdsource legitimate cultural and creative endeavors. It seems that we're backpedaling to a medieval system, where science and art could only be done when bankrolled by a wealthy patron, whom the scientist/artist would have to accommodate if they expected the patronage to continue. [The dependence on corporate sponsors is really a form of this too, and as paying subscribers have evaporated, these have become ever-more-crucial.] Stringent copyright regimes have only brought us heavily sanitized, commercialized, vacuous media. I would argue loosening this would benefit most small writers and publishers. At the very least, limiting copyright terms and keeping some culturally relevant icons in the public domain would be a huge boon. For example, imagine if someone besides Disney could benefit commercially from the Star Wars franchise, which was originally released 40 years ago. Isn't that long enough for its creators to have had exclusive control? Something like a web-based micropayment service that dispensed monies based on time spent reading/enjoying would be useful, but it's hard to get everyone on board. I know there have been a couple of HN'ers who've made a pass at it, but to this point, nothing has stuck.

acjohnson55 10y ago
There should be a physical graveyard devoted enterprises that have attempted to solve this problem. I agree with you, but I'm not holding my breath.

apathy 10y ago

The sole comment as of 11:26AM PDT, April 29th, 2017, is devastating. It suggests that science journalism is fucked. I'm going to poll a few friends that do freelance work for Nature & Science to see if this is the general consensus.

Cyphase 10y ago
Here's the comment for anyone who's curious, posted by "Adam" on "04.29.2017 @1:19 PM" (I'm guessing EDT): > Science journalism is basically dead as a thing. Many of the top publications pay late or not at all. The rates for freelancers is consistently low and the expectations are high and getting higher. Other than a very small number of high performers, this is not a job and the best that most can expect is to be scraping by as a freelancer. Understandably, many simply stop doing it.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Computers accelerate information exchange, and so much of capitalism is based on the latter. This means huge rewards for those who aim at the popular taste...but the popular taste is very much the lowest common denominator of our cultural data sets. And while it's entirely right to aim at that, our accelerated capitalist system does not do so well with steadily financing things which aim above that. This might be because economic models pursue equilibria of supply and demand, but just as there is a lowest common denominator of both there is also a highest common factor of which economic models take no account, and therefore under-finance.

Animats 10y ago

The current issue is headed "Consciousness". Groan. That's been discussed to death in the AI community, with little result.

programd 10y ago

One of the problems is that they're shipping dead trees. No way is this economically sustainable these days. They should have gone all digital and raised their prices long ago. Let's do some math - how many subscribers do they need to break even if they pare down staff, go all digital, and raise their price a bit? Hand-wavy numbers for minimal viable staffing, but should be order of magnitude correct: $ 600,000 Freelancers, $5K per article, 20 articles/issue, 6 issues/year $ 200,000 2 editorial $ 100,000 1 marketing person, online marketing savvy $ 100,000 2 support staff (clerical, PA, etc) $ 200,000 2 management/fundraising/operations staff $ 100,000 1 webmaster/IT person $ 100,000 outsourced services (HR, payroll, website hosting, etc) $1,400,000 annual burn rate assuming a minimal staff to run just the online magazine and dump print (I acknowledge they have other expenses, but let's ignore them for now) If you charge $60 for an annual subscription - very reasonable for the content - they would need 23333.33 subscribers to break even. They got $1.2 million last year in grants, some $9.5 million in funding since 2012. If they can't manage to attract 24K subscribers with that kind of funding they don't deserve to stay in business no matter how good their content is. I love their content, but they need somebody who knows how to run a business to be in charge.

anigbrowl 10y ago
But look, there's a bigger problem here. Maybe they can't get 34k subscribers because it's hard to get people to cough up $60 a year, have all their subscription data resold yadda yadda. You say the problem is dead-tree publishing but I don't think the additional layout and printing costs are so much bigger than what you've outlined above. They're trying to cut costs by not paying the people who actually produce the content (as opposed to those who package it through the editorial function); their other alternative is to produce more popular content that would attract more ad revenue, but that would mean a loss of quality because markets don't always reward quality. This is, literally, why we can't have nice things.
- kebolio 10y ago
  Capitalism is why we can't have nice things in the first place. Capitalism precludes news media from reporting fairly and accurately rather than pander to their advertisers. Another example: want cheap fast internet? Too expensive to run fibre even though these corporations are making profits that run into billions and none of the US giants will have this so-called "common carrier" policy.

Jerry2 10y ago

I just subscribed. It's one of my favorite mags I read all the time and I was introduced to it by HN. Had no idea they were struggling. I hope more subscribe and I hope it survives.

literallycancer 10y ago

Great, maybe now we can some content that is not funded by a religious lobby, for a change? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation#Cont...

hackuser 10y ago

> started Nautilus in 2012 with a two-year, $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation That's very interesting and important. I know the Templeton Foundation as funders of 'research' into creationism. Richard Dawkins, for example, is apparently a critic of theirs and refused to participate in a project of theirs. The Templeton Foundation's Wikipedia page tells some other interesting stories with names you may recognize (with the caveat that it is Wikipedia). I wonder what influence they have on Nautilus. It's a genuine question; the world isn't black and white, Templeton is not evil, and I don't know their current level of funding for Nautilus - perhaps they could use more Templeton money. OTOH, funders can have subtle influence in many ways, from story selection to self-censorship. EDIT: Oops, should have kept reading to answer one of my questions: "[The Templeton Foundation] has dialed back funding for Nautilus, although it gave the magazine an additional $1.25 million in 2015, and a little more than $1.2 million last year"

chis 10y ago

Just subscribed. 14$ a year seems way too cheap, but maybe they've run some numbers on it

nsainsbury 10y ago

I used to be a subscriber to Nautilus and initially loved their work. Over time however I've drifted away primarily because I've come to feel a lot of their articles are popularisations of the the sort of low quality "science" you see regularly make its way to HN (before getting ripped apart in the comments). Specifically, articles based on non-reproducible, low N, p-hacked studies from fields like psychology, social science, neuroscience, etc. As the replication crisis wreaks havoc and meta-studies continue to reveal major structural issues with work in these fields, I just can't bring myself to read Nautilus anymore.

vijayr 10y ago
Most of the comments here are positive (from my limited reading, I like Nautilus too, no affiliation). I'm just curious - can you give a few examples of the articles you didn't like?

sandis 10y ago

That's sad to hear. Has to be my favorite publication. I subscribe to the digital edition, and, while visiting Los Angeles, bought a print copy at Barnes & Noble. I did ask whether they carry older issues and unfortunately the answer was no.

rvijapurapu 10y ago

Thanks for posting this story, I loved reading Nautilus articles. Today I've decided to do something about supporting them - I have purchased their Prime Membership. I wish more of us can do the same.

slackingoff2017 10y ago

I used to work in the "content generation" sphere. There are two tangible things that humans love to generate for free, art and writing. These things on their own are almost always monetarily worthless even if their worth to society is huge. The reason is that most people, like us here on this board, willingly produce creative writing for free. The only money in content is advertising since humans need some coaxing to produce it. This is resulting in companies that focus on content being controlled by advertisers behind the scenes. These days it's simple to get "paid placement" almost anywhere with zero mention that the content is sponsored. This also explains why the best articles seem to come out of companies that don't sell writing. Google employees and the like are putting out research and case studies for fun, labors of love.

Heliosmaster 10y ago

If only their printed version wasn't so expensive here in Europe for the shipping...