Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week:
A day in the life of a freelance journalist, 2013 — “We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month”
The problem with online freelance journalism — “Digital journalism isn’t really about writing, any more … it’s more about reading, and aggregating, and working in teams”
A day in the life of a digital editor, 2013 — An editor at the Atlantic responds to Nate Thayer’s post on freelancing
How much should a writer be paid, if anything — A conversation about the economics of journalism in the digital era
Nora Ephron’s final act — The late writer/director’s son, Jacob Bernstein, remembers his mother’s last days
The Sheryl Sandberg backlash — “What felt wrong was not that Sheryl Sandberg was being criticized … but that normally thoughtful writers issued such damning verdicts on a book they had not even bothered to read”
Payola scandal involving a wide range of American media — Outlets from Huffington Post to National Review carried pieces financed by the Malaysian government
The growth of newspapers across the US, 1690-2011 — This data visualization plots over 140,000 newspapers published over three centuries in the United States
How Disney bought Lucasfilm–and its plans for Star Wars — Iger was impressed by Lucas’s skills. “He just has this way of carrying that light saber,” Iger recalls. “He was more adept at using it than me”
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.