I missed Alan Jacobs’s post on Hensher. Jacobs, too, points out that academics benefit monetarily but indirectly from writing and that Webber should have taken Hensher’s situation as a professional writer into consideration. But things are not so clear, he writes, when it comes to online writing:

That said, there are a great many fuzzy areas here, especially in relation to online writing, because every major outlet is constantly starved for new content — more content than almost any outlet can reasonably be expected to pay, or pay more than a pittance, for. Thus Slate’s Future Tense blog asked to re-post a post I wrote here — but of course did not offer to pay for it. I said yes, but should I have?

Read the rest.