I have a short piece coming up on Ars Technica this weekend on this exact issue. Stay tuned. :-)

acqq: Cyrus Farivar from Ars Technica. I'm working on a story on this exact issue. Can you email me? cyrus.farivar AT arstechnica.com Thx!

What journalists have been hired to A16Z, YC and GV?

All from TechCrunch:

A16Z: Kyle Russell

YC: Colleen Taylor

GV: MG Siegler, Leena Rao

500 Startups: Ryan Lawler

Totally affordable if you live in Oakland. :-)

(Disclosure: I live in Oakland.)

Email me: cyrus.farivar [at] arstechnica.com . Serious!

Ransoms?

Yep :D

Writers just give some sneak peak about their stories and if the funding goal is reached the story will be published free for everyone to read.

Have you thought about turning it into a crowdfunding platform before stories are written?

Journalists can post a pitch and if enough people pitch in, they'll get the money to go and write the story.

Good question.

Actually I have thought about that, but I think that Kickstarter, Indiegogo etc. covers that already pretty well.

There is off course little bit risk for writers in case that campaign won't succeed. But because people already long blog postings just for the joy of writing, I think that it is not too big risk to take.

And the good part about our concept is that funders will get their story immediately when the campaign is over instead of waiting for some future release.

Um, a library?

For the time being, my wife and I use Straight Talk ($45 mo = unlimited talk/text + around 1-1.5GB of data [it's unclear]) It's an AT&T MVNO, and no 4G, but it works for us, and is the cheapest option I could find. (We both have unlocked iPhones.)