There's always going to be some kind of gatekeeping at some point in the process--even in a purely digital marketplace, there's limited attention. Small publications like this are pretty much the least limiting form of this: relatively cheap to produce, many of them with only a few employees, publishing many short pieces, often skewing toward authors without existing followings.

There's a huge difference between controlling access to a niche audience which in large part exists because of the publication itself, and controlling access to publication in general.