BTW, westy, no reply to the trashing of your paid-by-the-paper fairy tale?!?! Are we to call you "Young Fraud"?
"The "First Author" is the person who is recognised as having the greatest contribution to the paper (whether true or not) intended to be submitted to a journal. Most scientific journals designate the first author as having special rights and controls over the editing of an article."
Papers are written with the use of Grant Money. The First Author is in control of the grant in most cases. Multiple papers are usually written from a single grant so yes academicians are paid "by the paper" for the most part. Just like back in the day publishers paid novelists by the word. In the academic world it has stayed pretty stagnant as far as grants and payment go.
My wife is still being published and that is how she gets paid.
I know of no one that gets paid by the paper. You get paid out of the grant and, if you don't publish enough, you may not get another one. As far as the first author goes and their importance, I've never heard of special rights and editing. That depends on the relationship between the first and last author, usually the grant holder. In my experience it's the last author who has those "special rights". After all, it's their grant and their reputation at stake. It's rare that a grant holder, except those just starting out and good enough to land a substantial grant early in their career, does any of the lab work or much of the writing. That's done by their research associates. The person with "special rights" advises and/or directs the experiments and has final say on the content of the paper. While some may do it all themselves, be first author and the grant holder, that's rare.