
The Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free - kawera
https://traffic.piano.io/2017/12/11/the-information-doesnt-want-to-be-free/
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noobermin
Can I request a change of title? This is essentially an ad for The
Information, a news service. I get it's a clever play on words from the famous
internet phrase "information wants to be free" but many people clicking on it
probably don't know that. It is pretty close to clickbait.

EDIT: not that it isn't interesting. It would just be beneficial to readers to
know what they are getting into.

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breck
Sidenote: Stewart Brand's full quote is more complex: "Information Wants To Be
Free. Information also wants to be expensive...That tension will not go away."

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allenz
Summary: The Information is a subscription-only news publication covering
Silicon Valley and the tech business. It has 10,000 subscribers and is a must-
read for tech elites.

Its founder, Jessica Lessin, argues that ad revenue promotes high-volume
sensationalist noise, whereas subscription revenue promotes deep journalism.
Lessin is running an accelerator for subscription-only science and local news:
[https://www.theinformation.com/announcing-the-information-
ac...](https://www.theinformation.com/announcing-the-information-accelerator)

Others argue that B2B publications are easiest to run subscription-only. The
Information provides exclusive business value such as earnings calls and org
charts.

~~~
allenz
A minor detail: "To woo [reporters], Lessin offers compensation that consists
of their former base salary plus 10 percent."

AB 168 recently banned this practice in California, to make salaries more
equitable.

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dwaltrip
Link to the bill:
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB168)

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paulcnichols
The meta lesson of this article is an example of decent content marketing.

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wrs
Back in the day, we had Esther Dyson's Release 1.0, which similarly had a
limited but very influential audience who paid for the rather pricey
subscription, and was published in an archaic medium (email is the new paper,
I guess).

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ryanworl
They also have a podcast which covers their biggest stories of the week with
interviews of reporters who wrote them. It is free and not very long, so if
you like podcasts I would check it out.

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DaggerDagger
Name or Link?

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PatrickAppel
The Information's 411

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ateesdalejr
Don't want to give away email to anybody so is the first part of the article
the gist of things?

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bllguo
[https://outline.com/kngJrL](https://outline.com/kngJrL) if you want to read
the entire article

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kornish
Thanks for sharing! Really enjoyed the article.

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gech
So much capital movement in VC circles, don't be surprised that the gossip
about it sells too.

