Matt: Well Said Sir!

I don't employ a Chauffer, a candle maker, a lamp lighter, a skullery maid, a **** boy, a chimney sweep or a host of other people I might have found vital in the 18th or 19th centuries. Their jobs have been replaced by a combination of technology (vehicles with automated mixture control, electric light, vacuum cleaners, flush toilets, gas central heating etc.) and DIY.

In the information age, publishing has to change. You can't publish a million (expensive paper) copies of a one size fits all article and expect to sell them when the competition is the WWW that somewhere includes the exact subject I choose to read that day. The audience has come to expect more as well as (perhaps) the quality falling.

Find a way for the "quality" writer to edit the stuff produced by millions writing from first hand knowledge and you've maybe got a product that sells. (Maybe there is some way to detect bad grammer or fifty word sentences without punctuation?). Otherwise I'm betting the amateurs are here long after the professionals give up the ghost at least for disposable media (books are different).

In terms of payment, something like MCN is incredably poor value. £1.90 for fifteen minutes rummaging and five minutes unsatisfactory reading. The net isn't free, but even at 50p for a mobile connection is cheaper than MCN and will bring me to some article of better content. Again, invent a searchable, high quality, variable content, mobile source employing your high quality writers and I think you'll have a product you could maybe get an few extra pence for. If these few pence can support writers only turning out a few articles a week, I'd doubt. Maybe the porn sites lead the way, or do most pervs stick to the free ones for that too?

Andy