When you're kept by a patron you don't have to duke it out in the media marketplace for dollars and for readers. In some ways that's a blessing because it takes a lot of pressure off you.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm very conscious that I'm an entertainer. Something like 73 percent of my readers are college graduates, so you can't condescend to people. You've got to tell them a story that they will be willing to pay money to read.
For everything you give an audience, you always have to take one thing away. They always have to pay for the story.
Collectively, we are in thrall to media - because they deliver to us many of the psychic goods we crave, and we know no other way to live.
Media is very different from financial services. People are very fickle and very vocal. They believe that things should be one way and not the other. It's still very rewarding to build products for huge audiences. It feels like you're making an impact.
I can't give money away to buy listeners. I can't pay listeners off with phones or food stamps or anything. I can't come by my audience by buying it.
It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.
I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value.
To be honest with you, I worry about concentration of ownership in media, where you have a handful of media conglomerates largely controlling what we see, hear and read.
When good media takes a bounded form, and comes once in a period of time, it begs to be consumed as a whole - it creates an engaging experience. We don't dip in and out of an episode of 'Game of Thrones,' after all - we take it in as a whole. Why have we abandoned this concept when it comes to publications, simply because they exist online?
I make the majority of my money from Patron, but my passion is with Paul Mitchell: I spend 85 per cent of my time on it.
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