Sometime this week, but quite likely tomorrow, advertisements will begin appearing on The Wire Science. The Wire‘s, and by extension The Wire Science‘s, principal source of funds is donations from our readers. We also run ads as a way to supplement this revenue; they’re especially handy to make up small shortfalls in monthly donations. Even so, many of these ads look quite ugly – individually, often with a garish choice of colours, but more so all together, by the very fact that they’re advertisements, representing a business model often rightly blamed for the dilution of good journalism published on the internet.
But I offer all of these opinions as caveats because I’m quite looking forward to having ads on The Wire Science. At least one reason must be obvious: while The Wire‘s success itself, for being an influential and widely read, respected and shared publication that runs almost entirely on readers’ donations, is inspiring, The Wire Science as a niche publication focusing on science, health and the environment (in its specific way) has a long way to go before it can be fully reader funded. This is okay if only because it’s just six months old – and The Wire got to its current pride of place after more than four years, with six major sections and millions of loyal readers.
As things stand, The Wire Science receives its funds as a grant of sorts from The Wire (technically, it’s a section with a subdomain). We don’t yet have a section-wise breakdown of where on the site people donate from, so while The Wire Science also solicits donations from readers (at the bottom of every article), it’s perhaps best to assume it doesn’t funnel much. Against this background, the fact that The Wire Science will run ads from this week is worth celebrating for two reasons: 1. that it’s already a publication where ads are expected to bring in a not insubstantial amount of money, and 2. that a part of this money will be reinvested in The Wire Science.
I’m particularly excited about reason no. 1. Yes, ads suck, but I think that’s truer in the specific context of ads being the principal source of funds – when editors are subordinated to business managers and editorial decisions serve the bottomline. But our editorial standards won’t be diluted by the presence of ads because of ads’ relative contribution to our revenue mix. (I admit that psychologically it’s going to take some adjusting.) The Wire Science is already accommodated in The Wire‘s current outlay, which means ad revenue is opportunistic, and an opportunity in itself to commission an extra story now and then, get more readers to the site and have a fraction of them donate.
I hope you’ll be able to see it the same way, and skip the ad-blocker if you can. 🙂