When is interacting with viewers and readers “audience participation,” and when is it “Hey, let’s get the punters to do our writing work for us for nothing?” This Salon.Com writer has an interesting perspective on the situation. Sure hope he got paid for it:
by Daniel D’Addario
Entertainment Weekly, the venerable consumer-friendly magazine about movies and TV and the like, is under the same crunch as the rest of the media industry; its parent company, Time Inc., has recently gone through a series of layoffs. But the manner in which the magazine is attempting to build out its brand is the absolute worst-case scenario — bad for authors and for readers.
Lucia Moses at Digiday reports that Entertainment Weekly is to launch an online “contributor network” that is to feature readers as writers, particularly on “TV and eventually other areas […] staff reporters don’t cover deeply.” In other words, anyone can now write for Entertainment Weekly, but they shouldn’t expect a check. Per Digiday: