Some of you may have noticed that my regular weekend articles didn’t post this weekend. That’s because they are now appearing on the Media Magpies Patreon, and as soon as there is a site—it’s being built—they will be appearing on the brand new Media Magpies site. A lot of you already knew that because you’re part of that group. For the rest of you, let me try to answer some questions.

Q: Media What Now?

A: Ah, yes, excellent question. Gets right to the heart of the matter. Has anyone ever told you how smart you are? Media Magpies is the name a group of us came up with for our new site. It will have a lot of the Solute writers you’ve come to know and read, not to mention a few new faces we hope you’ll enjoy. Regular Solute columns will now be regular Magpies columns. There are a few new columns, too, and of course the assortment of articles about random stuff you’d expect from us.

Q: Yeah, yeah, my mom says I’m cool. Why a new site?

A: For a long time now, a lot of us have not felt seen or supported here at The Solute. We have no control over the site. Suggestions we make meet with no response. Worse, though you may not know it as a reader, functionality for writers has been getting steadily more untenable. We’ve had to start deleting old images in order to make room for new ones. Scheduled posts do not always post until they’re manually told to do so. You may have noticed that the article about Mon Oncle in the “new messages” sidebar is not exactly new, fine though the article may be. The site was built new and so far as we can tell has not been upgraded since, and it’s starting to show its age.

Q: But if your new site isn’t done yet, why now?

A: Honestly, in part to combat inertia. We needed to make the move to keep our momentum as a group. We’d set a date, and we stuck to it despite some issues our coder was having that meant a slight delay. I can promise that, when the Magpies site is ready, it will be a beautiful, functional site that is easy to navigate and has features some of us have been wanting for a long time now.

Q: Okay, I can see that. But what if I don’t want to pay for the content I’ve been getting for free?

A: You don’t have to! It is not our intention to go to a paywall model. Yes, we’re on Patreon now, but every article will be available for the public. $5 members will get early access—yup, I’m going to have to start writing articles more than fifteen minutes before they’re due, I guess—and there are a whole lot of other membership benefits, including a Discord server. We’d like it if you’d at least get a free membership, to boost our numbers a bit, but it’s absolutely not required to keep reading our content, and a message will post there to announce the new site as soon as it’s ready.

Q: You’re hiding behind-the-scenes gossip from me.

A: That’s not a question.

Q: Can you share the behind-the-scenes gossip?

A: We’d like to not. It’s not our intention to broadcast a lot of scurrilous backbiting. This is as much a business decision as anything. You may or may not be aware of this, but Solute writers don’t get paid. Which is fine; we all knew it was volunteer when we took the gig. But a suggestion was made years ago to start monetizing the site so that we could at least get an honorarium for articles, and that was met with no response. Media Magpies will have a Patreon. We already have a Threadless store featuring the deathless visage of our mascot, Mortimer. (Future items are already under discussion.) There is vague discussion about some minor advertising. (This discussion brought to you by Nord VPN!) First, we’ll be paying for our site hosting. Then, we’ll be paying back some investors that have gotten us where we are. Then, we might want to start paying writers at least a couple of bucks, literally, per article.

Q: Can I be a Magpies writer?

A: Our board of editors will accept writing submissions and discuss it. We haven’t finished hashing out how we’re handling that, but the process is being worked out right now.

Okay, I think that’s all the major questions. If you have anything else, another of our board members will be regularly checking the comments on this—Disqus is kind of broken for me right now—and we’ll all be around. If nothing else, feel free to pester us on the Patreon. We hope to see you all at Media Magpies one way or another.