When Writing Is No Longer Art

SEO is killing art. AI is coming in for the final blow. An intentional reading community is the answer.

Online writing, as we know it, is morphing into something that puts the burden of creativity into a Google search bar.

What do I mean? The major publications are morphing away from art and towards common questions.

What hiking boots do I buy?

Where do I camp in Glacier National Park?

What should I put into my hunting pack?

When the common question is beyond the point, pubs lean hard into clickbait. Data equals dollars from brands. And even then it’s not enough to make things meet in the middle.

Even then, they’re asking for money from readers to enter gatefolds in which they pay only to read sponsored content, the same answered questions, headlines like this: 

A Shark Attacks A SUP Fisherman

Bear Attack on a Ski Hill

Man Marries Bull Moose in Illegal Ceremony

I’ve spent the majority of the past five years writing those kinds of articles. I’m proud of a lot of the work I did; I do believe it can help people make better decisions at scale, and I think it’s necessary in a world of information-sharing to build expert content.

But I also feel, in my heart of hearts, that writing is bigger than this. And that the publications that used to do this well are switching to other things because of attention spans, brand dollars, and the inevitable crunch of AI. I don’t even know sometimes if what I’m reading is simply terrible writing or ChatGPT. My trust is waning, even as someone who has done the work. 

I’m offering up a solution at a very small scale. 

The Solution is This. 

Twice a month, we turn our attention to a long-form piece of writing about the outdoors. It’s crowdfunded, and the majority of that funding goes directly to the writers. Overhead is minimal. No brands or SponCon allowed. 

I truly don’t care if it’s just 50 of us, 100, or 500. This is not a money-making endeavor. It’s a chance to read writing that might have once gone into a magazine that you looked forward to once a month. 

Intentional Community for Committed Readers

This is what I want to create. If you have writers you love, if you want to try your hand at writing, I will only accept submissions (beyond personal invites) from folks who choose to pitch in. 

I hope it inspires people in different genres to do the same thing. For me, this is about the outdoors. That’s what I love to read about, that’s what I feel is slowly being siphoned away.

The Ask?

For $5 a month or $50 a year, you can join in. Want to pitch in more than that? You can be a founding member and directly influence my ability to pay writers for their work.

That’s about $2.50 a story. Not a bad get.

And really, it’s two per month, but I’d like to make space for more artists if it takes off.

The First Month

I’ll be providing two of my own stories as I build a little capital to pay writers. The first is a long-form story I wrote about how hunting helped me make peace with death; the second, a story about becoming an elk hunter, with limited success.

I hope you’ll join me in this experiment. I think, at the very least, it could be fun.

— Nicole Qualtieri, your Editor-in-Chief & Founder