The reporter paints this as a recession story of how journalist Paul Smalera, 29, is making due at decreased wages writing online after losing a job when Portfolio folded. Smalera is a more engaging writer than the one who is writing about him, but I credit her for pitching the piece to the NYT. But rather than being the recession piece, as she slants it, Smalera, actually argued that the hubris of the editor, not the recession, that doomed the magazine. Smalera writes on the state of journalism at his blog, Living Through 1500 (an allusion by Clay Shirky to the ieffects of nvention of the Guttenberg printing press, and I've linked to Smalera's blog post "Bit-stained wretches" about the current article, as well as Shirky's ... More »