Andrew Sullivan’s Ad-Free Publishing Experiment Sees Six-Figure Revenue In First Six Hours | TechCrunch

A timely information responsibility case study

"As for why he’s taking such a dramatic stand against ads, Sullivan said that he’s watched the media industry over the past decade and found that the pursuit of ad revenue has led not just to blatant “whoring” for pageviews (for example “slideshows of topless celebrities”), but also exerted a more “subtly corrupting” influence by leading to the creation of special issues and the like, which he said are basically “gussied-up vehicles for advertising.”
“Both those avenues seem kind of desperate,” Sullivan said. “You find yourself trying to create pageviews that don’t really have any editorial basis.”"

Andrew Sullivan’s Ad-Free Publishing Experiment Sees Six-Figure Revenue In First Six Hours | TechCrunch