A week and a half after its debut and the glittery halo has faded a bit on McSweeney’s 320-page full-color San Francisco Panorama newspaper. While most have been quick to point out how lush and lovely the thing is, Choire Sicha at the Awl breaks down the actual logistics of such a project — and with some devastating results on the financial (read: reality) side of things. Basically? Even when charging $16 and paying writers 12 cents per word or less, McSweeney’s more or less breaks even on the paper, in the event that they pay their in-house staffers less than minimum wage. Still, and this is what continues to baffle me, the common reaction is: So? It’s pretty! (The color infographics, that is — not the future of journalism, ha-ha!) So thank god for this commenter.

Sure, when you gather a bunch of amazingly talented people and don’t pay them and charge a premium price you will have a great product. Don’t you think we already know that? The challenge is to produce a product with a variety of talent and employees that need to eat. And need medical insurance. Also, you have to get advertisers. And subscriptions.

Dave KNOWS that it is almost impossible and that’s why he ain’t gonna do it. It’s easy to have all the most talented people working for no pay and then saying “look at me look what we made why can’t you be like us?”

Yes, why can’t you? Where’s your trust fund, little reporter?

For their part, D. Eggers’ public comments lately have been considerably more humble than they were back in June, when he announced the project. Plus I think it’s interesting that McSweeney’s started off calling the Panorama a “prototype” and lately refers to it more often as an “experiment” — more forgiving of these sorts of problems, and with no expectation of a follow-up.