A la carte paywalls have been in vogue with magazine publishers lately.
In July, Esquire put a $1.99 paywall around a nearly 10,000-word investigative story, "The Prophet" by Luke Dittrich. In a note about the paywall, David Granger, Esquire's editor in chief (pictured above), explained that the story took months to produce — and that such journalism doesn't come cheap.