I work as a copywriter and content writer, and I disagree with you.

Firstly, you're putting a lot of different types of writers in the same bag, which complicates matters.

It's basic supply and demand. There's a glut of skilled writers willing to work for free and a dearth of people willing to pay for journalism, either through subscriptions or advertising. There's an idea that this is the cynical exploitation of journalists by publishers, but that simply wouldn't be possible if demand for writing outstripped supply.

You are mixing things up. There is a glut of bad writers. There are very few skilled writers. I say this from a writer's perspective.

From a business person's perspective, many companies have lowered their expectations with regard to a writer's ability. Why in the world would they do this? This is actually pretty easy. They think they know how "artists" and "writers" work; they believe they are too slow and worry over superfluous details.

Let me first say the problem is less people are spending less money on the arts than, say, 40 years ago. Companies focus on their bottom line, of course. They ask of writers for specific things that will either protect their bottom line or help their visibility (mostly online now).

Nate Thayer said it: "I am sure you can do what is the common practice these days and just have one of your interns rewrite the story as it was published elsewhere, but hopefully stating that is how the information was acquired". I highly respect Nate Thayer. His display of professionalism and humility is admirable.

The company I work for makes me rewrite stories. This is why we do it: SEO keywords increase visibility by adding new/unique content to our site that really didn't originate or isn't unique to the company I work for. It is an easier way to add diverse content and then add the keywords we focus on, apart from the whole Google campaign stuff. We operate thusly because, since I am a writer and hardly anyone thinks we're worth anything, I have many, many, many other tasks that I must do throughout the day unrelated to the act of compelling writing. So I have very little research time and time to let what I write sink in. Therefore, I cannot get to it later after a week with fresh eyes. I am also the only editor and proofreader. This is wrong. I am meticulous. But I work at an actual factory (technically a "warehouse") in an industrial city where most companies are wholesalers. This city smells of rotting pig carcass. (Literally, though, which is rather funny-interesting and ironic. And I hesitate to say this, because you will probably now know where I am located.)

What has happened is companies, rightly so, get to why they really need the writer for in order to gain visibility and be searchable online. I'm of the opinion that many online places like Huffington Post don't care for what they are actually reporting on. I used to follow them on Twitter and they constantly A/B test articles with different headlines, switching the titles depending on hot or trending keywords. They will write headlines or articles based on trending keywords that will get them the most clicks, not because it provides compelling writing that is needed for us to improve as a society. But now I am imposing my own aesthetic and worldview on what writing should be.

I can't say The Atlantic does this, but I look at their headlines carefully and sometimes question their intentions. It's a little harder for me to discern The Atlantic's agenda, though. But the writing industry has made me jaded and sceptical of most online magazines.

A good friend studied journalism (I didn't) and they teach him that magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the NY Times and others no longer provide any real value to the art of journalism. Now it's mostly bloggers (working for free, for the most part) who have more valuable things to say. However, you will always find a couple of writers within large organisations who still offer compelling journalism. This is what makes things a little tricky. We usually follow these few on Twitter instead of visiting the front page of the companies they work for. By doing this, we don't need to rummage through all the trash.

Personally, I think we'll come to accept the idea that, for the most part, writing is a leisure activity and not a profession. It's not unreasonable to imagine that the profitability of writing and publishing was just a temporary blip, as a result of a peculiar set of technological and economic conditions.

This doesn't even make sense to me. What are you trying to say? All of writing can be written automatically by drones? Huh? Writing is not all scientistic. It's not all about numbers and data. In some theoretical world, computers may write all types of texts (novels, stories, journalism, etc.) so well we may not distinguish them from human-generated texts, but I am not here to hypothesise.

With regard to writing being a leisure activity, the arts have switched back and forth from being entertainment to didactic. The period in history which preceded the Enlightenment period is an example of this. Before the Age of Reason, the arts were seen as entertaining. If you view the arts as historico-cultural movements, you would understand the pendulum has swung back and forth. And my own bias is to think that it will continue being so. In the mid-20th century, I believe both existed almost harmoniusly, but with the creation of the World Wide Web, we seem to be confused as to what is entertaining and what is didactic and their respective values as a society. The whole culture of irony does not help matters either.

I don't really understand the whole "temporary blip" thing. Care to elaborate? Obviously writing is not just a leisure activity, so you have me ultimately confused. I do believe that the very nature of writing is suberversiveness or experimentation. I find it difficult to fathom that a computer can write something like In Search of Lost Time, and more importantly, I don't know why anyone would prefer to read something similar written by something without a heart.

Photography is the clear forerunner.

Photography is palpable. Language deals with meaning, connotations, subtexts, etc., which are all intangible. It is clear when we see a bad photo meant for, say, a travel magazine. It is difficult to find an equivalent in writing.

The real villains are educational institutions

I partially agree with this. I think there are good and bad professors in the arts (which I know is not saying much, if anything at all). The bad ones are looking out for themselves, either by just focusing on trying to get published or recruiting easily manipulated or "lost" arts students into their master/doctorate degree programme. There are a few who are more idealistic and want to help someone who they think has the potential to have an impact on society by transforming a small part of literature and how writing is perceived. They know the odds are against them and most likely it will never happen, but this is the romanticisation ofacademia and old educational institutions. Incidentally, I've found most of these types of profs teach literature & politics/poli sci, so they emphasise political writing.

Just the $0.02 of a rambling writer.