We're very happy to introduce WPR's newest regular columnist, Thomas P.M. Barnett, appearing every Monday beginning next week. Most of you are probably already familiar with Barnett's work, but for those of you who aren't, you're in for a real treat. In addition to being a New York Times best-selling author and a sought-after public speaker, Barnett is a challenging and iconoclastic thinker, who combines intellectual creativity with clarity of analysis. The result is a far-reaching vision of U.S. grand strategy that somehow manages to be both provocatively novel and intuitively obvious at the same time. If you like big ideas, you'll like Barnett's column. We're very excited and honored to have him at WPR. Barnett's arrival completes our lineup of regular columnists -- each of whom brings a unique approach to assessing today's, and tomorrow's, trends -- and marks a natural milestone in a process we began last September, when we first started remaking our content model. So we thought we'd take this opportunity to share the guiding logic behind some of the recent developments here at WPR, which in some ways might seem counterintuitive. At a time when most online news and opinion sites have chosen to embrace the free content model, WPR has chosen to adopt a two-tier model, with free daily briefings and columns complemented by biweekly paid premium content. The reason behind this is two-fold. First, the free content model has yet to prove its long-term viability, and indeed has left many publications struggling to survive. We're passionate about what we do here at WPR, but passion alone cannot sustain a publication. We're convinced that the approach we've adopted will be validated in the near future -- and that our readers will reward it -- as the free content model is increasingly revealed to be a necessary but temporary period in the expansion of Web-based news delivery.
Another Step in the Evolution and Growth of World Politics Review
