So, yeah, the economics of our business are terrible in some ways. And like everything else, the worst of it falls on the workers, the people making the widgets, doing the journalism, making the beds. The money gets sucked upwards and the work gets pushed down.

Earlier today we brought you the story of Nate Thayer, a freelance journalist who took umbrage with The Atlantic for asking him to rewrite a blog post for them, for no money.

In the interest of fairness, it’s time to direct you to this piece, written by The Atlantic’s Technology channel senior editor, Alexis Madrigal, who tries to shine a light on what he and his colleagues do. It’s a bit tl;dr, but it’s worth reading to understand the modern economics and logistics of digital publishing for many people in the business.