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Is this actually true? It's pretty hard to believe, I honestly feel like you pulled it out of your ass, but it's also possible I'm totally out of touch. This

Is this actually true? It's pretty hard to believe, I honestly feel like you pulled it out of your ass, but it's also possible I'm totally out of touch. This article is a "feature" (not entirely sure what that implies) in a scientific journal (targeted towards a relatively general audience, compared to other scientific journals). Is this particular publication, or this type of publication, known to pay by the word? Which other publications pay by the word? Is it more common in some areas of publication than others? How could such an incentive-perverting mechanism not have died off by now? Do any companies still pay/evaluate their developers by lines of code written?

chc 12y ago
I used to work in newspapers and it's still pretty common in that industry. But they also usually give you a word count to hit, so it's not like you can just write yourself a Mercedes.
benbreen 12y ago
In my experience, big sites that crank out short articles like the Atlantic online, Slate, and Vice pay a set rate per piece, but longer-form outlets like Aeon and Nautilus pay per word. I've never written for a print-only magazine but I've heard that they still pay per word by and large. And I should add, the academic journals I've written for pay nothing at all!