Today, Paper Thin Walls announced that it is shutting down operations on Labor Day. According to head honcho (and former hip-hop guru at CMJ) Christopher Weingarten, the site will stay archived online…for a while.

Paper Thin Walls was a curious beast. It seemed out of place amidst the monomaniacal blogs (a camp to which Plug One sort of belongs), hipster crack indie sites and print magazine outposts that populate the online music landscape. Instead, it hearkened to the Web 1.0 formula of the late 90s. Remember Sonicnet, Platform Networks and 360 Hip-Hop? These sites essentially tried to launch major magazines with insightful, original journalism. They paid writers a decent rate. And they operated ethically, posting audio and visuals after clearing them with record labels.

It’s a wonder PTW lasted for three years with such a widely discredited philosophy guiding it. Today, even the aforementioned print magazine outposts — Rolling Stone’s Rock & Roll Daily, for example — occasionally indulge in a little leaking. Most online ventures without magazine/corporate backing, from Prefix to Pop Matters, force new writers into a long apprenticeship (Hey, at least you get your name on the Web!) before even paying them for their work. Sadly, and despite a deep-pocketed backer in Getty Images, PTW may have sealed its doom by operating honorably in a wild wild Internet where leaking is the law.

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