Long-form reporting
The cover story. Columns, pull quotes, and images placed by the box's own layout rules.
The
Take Economy
Cover story
Everyone has a take. Few show their work.
We're building a digital magazine for the attention age, where facts are settled before the arguing starts and the algorithm deciding what you see is printed right on the page.
Get notified when issue one ships
Status
In development
Architecture spec written. Box prototype built. Page turning and issue one are next.
“The site is the magazine.”
Design principle no. 1
01 · The idea
Print got the layout right. The web made everything else possible.
Pick up an old magazine, even a scanned one, and you already know how to read it. Feature on the left, photo on the right, pull quote breaking the column, ad in the corner. Every page is a set of boxes, and readers have understood that layout for a century.
Scans lose what the web does well: links, selectable text, search, sound, motion. The Take Economy keeps the magazine's layout and builds it on modern web tools. Issues are discrete and collectible, something you look forward to. And every page is live content, not a picture of one.
The name refers to the attention economy we all live in now, where a take spreads faster than the facts behind it. Our job is media literacy: helping readers agree on the facts first, then argue about what to do with them.
02 · Everything is a box
One building block. Every kind of story.
The box is the basic unit of the magazine. Each box type knows how to lay itself out. When we improve how dossiers look, every dossier in the archive improves with it.
The receipts
Multi-source investigations with timelines and a citation block for every claim.
In their words
Conversations you can read, or play as the original audio.
From the ground
Short dispatches with a place, a date, and a point.
Embedded right
A vertical Short sits in a vertical box. Each box matches the shape of its source.
Deep zoom
Planned: zoom in on any image box directly, without a pop-up.
The line that matters
One line from the story, set in its own box.
03 · Have it your way
Preview of a planned feature
Read it, watch it, or listen to it. You choose for each box.
Planned for phase 2. Presentation will be set on each box, not for the whole site: read the feature, listen to the interview on your commute, watch the field note. Every box will offer only the modes it can actually deliver.
Read
Selectable, searchable text with real links, typeset by the box's own layout rules.
Scroll turns the page
In progress. Scroll down for the next page, up for the previous one. You get the feel of flipping through an issue, and every page stays live and linkable.
Issues worth collecting
Each issue comes out complete, like a print edition, rather than as an endless feed.
Fast and findable
Every issue is built as static HTML that search engines can index. The page doesn't jump around while you read.
04 · The algorithm is a box
You'll see the algorithm. You'll be able to adjust it.
Planned for phases 3 and 5. In the archive, a story's size will reflect how much attention readers keep giving it. A three-year-old piece that people still read stays big. Stories nobody visits shrink. An editorial floor stops the most popular boxes from crowding out everything else. Until then, box sizes are editorial choices.
The ranking logic will be a box too, on the front page, where you can see it. It will list every signal we collect, and later you'll be able to adjust it.
- Time spent on a story
- Read, watch, or listen choice
- Zoom interactions
- Issue completion
What we don't collect: no third-party trackers and no cross-site tracking. We'll collect only the aggregate signals listed above, and until the attention engine ships we collect none of them.
Example stories and made-up values. The real weights and decay curve haven't been set. The layout only changes when you move a control.
05 · The build
What we're building, in order.
Five phases from our architecture spec, listed in build order.
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1
In progress
The box system and page turning
Static box layouts with scroll-to-turn-page navigation. The box prototype is built; page turning is next.
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2
Planned
Media in every box
Video, audio, slideshows, read-aloud, and deep zoom, each built into the box.
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3
Planned
The attention engine
Box sizes driven by reader attention, with a decay curve and an editorial floor.
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4
Planned
Live authoring
An AI-assisted Box Builder for our editors. Only editors use it, not readers.
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5
Planned
The algorithm box, v2
The full reader-facing control panel for ranking.
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