Heads up, internet-y rant ahead. Rather read about travel? Here’s an ode to Hawaii from my archives.
Let us assume, for a moment, that you are a professional writer, the kind that writes for a living. You make your living as a writer. You don’t have a project to promote. You don’t have a patron spouse. You didn’t make a killing in the dot com years on stock options or start ups. You’re just a working hack, a person who builds their living out of sentences. You write for money, that is what you do. Maybe you’re just like me — you have a day job doing writing work that most people never see, but you have some delusions of yourself as an essayist, a travel writer, a reporter. You’re a writer and this is what you do.
Now, let us assume that a large publication gives you the “opportunity” to publish your work. They are clear on the terms — you give us work, we publish it. No money is to change hands. The publication offers you “exposure” and “traffic.” You’re not a beginning writer, you’re a professional. You don’t have a class to sell, a book to promote. You need to pay your bills. For some reason, you say yes to this deal. Even more inscrutable, you say yes to this deal repeatedly. Then, oh, look, said publication goes on to sell for a significant chunk of change. 315 million luscious dollars.
“Unpaid writing gigs are unfair!” you protest. Now you decide that you should have been paid?
I’m not unsympathetic, though you may not believe me. And also, I’ve written for free. When I was a very new blogger, I was an unpaid contributor at the fledgling BlogHer network simply because I did not know I could get paid to blog. (Rookie mistake.) I had disagreements with the BlogHer network, but they paid their contributors very early in their establishment and went on to pay better than average rates for blogging. I wrote for free once for World Hum because I did not correctly read the submission guidelines. They paid me retroactively when they had the resources to do so. I was delighted to accept, though I did not expect to be paid — after all, I had agreed to the terms. Both World Hum and BlogHer wanted to become profitable and pay their contributors.
I deeply distrust the Heiress Post, as I like to call it. I won’t click links, I won’t share them, I’m petty that way. I think that the founder should have paid her contributors. I’m confident that if she didn’t want to use her own money to do so, she could have found financial backing. I also understand why some writers chose to give their work to a venture that did not pay them. They gambled. They played an SEO game or they promoted a pet project or they used the platform to shore up their credibility. There are any number of strategic reasons to have that byline in a writer’s portfolio. However, unless you had a contract stating otherwise, there was no reason to expect you would ever be paid.
It would be nice if part of the 315 million dollars for which the Post was sold went to the unpaid contributors that helped build it. The heroic good will established by paying those writers — imagine the good will I feel towards World Hum multiplied across — well, how many unpaid contributors were there for the Post? I understand the energy behind the Hey Ariana Facebook group that calls for sharing some of the profits. I understand the thinking behind the farcical call for a strike. But it’s too late. 315 million dollars too late.
Where was this public outrage was before the Post sold? While I sat at my desk seething every time I received a link that led me to that villainous publication, writers were cranking out work and handing it over, for free. I can only assume that they were in control of their senses at the time. I get that some of those people are angry now, that they feel cheated, that while they struggle, they imagine Arianna tossing another bundle of hundreds on the fire.
The editorial evil master mind wasn’t building a homeless shelter or an inner city school. She was building a media empire. Her writers, many unpaid minions, helped with that. In my more dramatic phases, I like to imagine them as pyramid builders, each article a block of stone, carved by hand, dragged by will, stacked one by one while cruel overseers cracked whips nearby. But it was a choice — unlike slaves of the Nile pharaohs, the writers that built the Post said, “Zero dollars? Okay then!” and hit send.
Why, if you think you should be paid for your work, would you do that?
- Awesome: Should I work for free?
- Hilarious: Daaahlinks, We’re RICH!
Amen, sista. I interned for free at a handful of national mags in my early journalism days–which you more or less have to do if you want to go on to have a career as a freelancer–but have not taken an unpaid gig since and refuse to do so. I wish more bloggers would realize their worth and follow suit.
(I also distrust the Heiress Post and disregard anything printed there. Anyone can write for them, no one is fact checking and copy editing what goes up…why on Earth would I take anything that post as credible, reliable information?)
Agree totally. Don’t go crying “ouch” when you knew going in you were getting screwed. If you knowingly chose that, well then…
We all can’t work for Bob’s Red Mill.
It’s one thing to not pay your writers because you can’t. It’s another to make hundreds of millions off the free talent and labor of your writers, then turn around and say, “F-U, you’re still not getting paid.” That just shows a lack of class and caring.
I also don’t have compassion for those who helped build her empire and are now crying foul. You knew what was happening and yet you chose, for whatever reason, to write for HP for free. Don’t cry to me about the past and how you got screwed. Just get out of there and don’t write for HP again.
As my mom used to say, “If you choose to play with a snake and it bites you, you only have yourself to blame.”
Good post, btw. =)
I don’t think you’re petty when it comes to the no-clicking thing…I avoid reading or sharing posts from the HP for some of the same reasons. (“Heiress Post”, I love it!).
I rarely guest post, and I stay away from the content farms (think low-paying “markets” that have been been among the loudest complainers when it came to Google’s recent algorithm change).
Yeah, I’ve had to keep a “day job” all of these years, and I’m somewhat alone out here in the Midwest when it comes to the travel blogging world, but I don’t feel so sorely taken advantage of and left chewing on my own shoe for sustenance. And I don’t feel like I’ve contributed to the problem by working for free and helping depress the fair market price for others who really need to make a living doing this.
There is one thing I’ve literally said for years (back when I was writing for dead tree markets around town here)-I don’t work for free because (a) it’s not my job to make a company owner rich by giving my work away, (b) it’s not my job to make it tougher for others to get a fair price for their work, and (c) I deserve to be compensated for my own hard work.
Sadly rookie slave labour happens in lots of industries, not just journalism. As a young art director I worked for little or nothing plenty of times. It sucks! It seems that many internet companies run on this model. I think all writers have to take a stand against it because, like anything else, if some people write for free then the going rate becomes nothing.
I don’t know that this warrants “taking a stand” so much as it calls for common sense. Who works for free? Interns. And even they get college credit for their time. Professionals — of ANY kind, writers or otherwise — aren’t interns.
I had a partnership dissolve last year because the company owner wanted to switch to a “free model.” I asked, repeatedly, why anyone would want to work for that company for free. The answers were utterly unsatisfactory.
I had a CVB and big-time band come to me with similar…they wanted NINE posts about their event on MY site. And they weren’t going to pay me a penny! Turns out the “payment” was going to be to fly me out and “let” me cover their event. So let me get this straight…you’re covering my expenses to WORK FOR FREE for you and give you all sorts of coveted ad space? Hmmm. That was not difficult at all to say no to.
slightly off topic… reading the above it suddenly occurred to me that I too am a writer. I don’t write “articles” per se (except in my own blog) but I do write lyrics. is that not writing?
oddly enough though, I choose to give them away (under certain small restrictions). but not to enrich some other party.
(back on topic)
I certainly agree with the premise that, if you do agree to working for nothing, and it turns out that the entity you’re giving your work to makes a bundle out of it, it’s nobodies fault but your own.
(semi-off topic)
though I’m certainly a writer, I’m not a “travel writer,” which makes me sad every time you announce another get-together of the travel writers here in the Emerald City. they sound like such fun and I hate to miss out on such things.
HH: You give ’em away when you sing too, just like I give it away when I blog here. But there’s a BIG difference between giving it away to your audience and giving it away to someone who’s profiting for your efforts while you don’t.
You could just show up at one of those gatherings. They’re travel focused typically, but they’re not for travel writers only, you know.
I just wanted to agree with your sentiment about finding true thankfulness in those start-ups that came back and paid their writers. I have written for a couple online magazines who haven’t been able to pay much (though they did manage to find a few pennies to scrape together), but every few months they come back and throw a couple extra dollars onto the article pay rate. The pay might be low, but the effort is very much appreciated, and I’ve come to value the relationships I’ve built with editors at publications who realize they wouldn’t be where they are today without the writers who provided the content.
Thanks for an intelligent overview of a subject which seems to be attracting a lot of dross. I’m from the UK, where we have the additional problem of a burgeoning internship culture, without which it’s extremely difficult to get into some industries, especially journalism and the NGO sector – but our university system doesn’t award credit for internships, so it’s mainly post-graduation jobseekers, and I think possibly also in contrast to the US, our internships are completely unpaid, so it really is all about getting yourself on the greasy pole. But of course taking 6 months or a year out to work unpaid while having to cover your costs in London is largely the preserve of the white, upper-middle-classes whose parents can afford to bankroll them through it, leading to an increasing diversity problem, including in campaign groups and NGOs working in the majority world where you’d want to have a slightly broader range of viewpoints and life experiences…
Rant over. On a lighter note, we had a bit of a furore last year in the UK when a high(ish)-profile tabloid journalist advertised on a major media site for an unpaid intern to basically do most of her job for her. http://greatwenlondon.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/do-you-have-what-it-takes-to-be-my-slave/ has a hysterical spoof, and a copy of the original post appears in the comments further down the page.
Your post is a direct hammer swing to the nail. I once liked to read the posts on Heiress Post and even kept looking at it daily even though I noticed a huge swing towards fluff. Thanks for your post. I’ve stopped being lazy and just removed the link to the site from my bookmarks. Something I should have done years ago.
I received this via email:
Should the HP Pay… || http://diannej.com/blog/2011/03/should-huffpo-pay-for-writing-thats-basically-self-promotion/
It discusses the rationale behind not paying. I’ve distilled this in my own mind as “We’re publishing self promotional garbage. Why would we pay for that?”
When your editor in chief says your blog is crap, well, what’s that say about the integrity of the publication as a whole?
Amen to all of you, sisters. And, yeah, I trust HuffPo rather less than I trust Wikipedia as a source of facts.
What’s worse (and I’m actually asking, because I’m not sure and could argue it either way): not paying writers but allowing considerable leeway and self-promotion, or paying writers next to nothing while enforcing strict editorial standards? It’s not the perfect analogy here, but is the penny tip actually worse than no tip at all?
I think those low pay rates are a crime. But in some cases, I understand why they exist. If the source genuinely can not pay decent rates, but they are trying to build something high quality, and you really want to be part of it… again, if you agree to the terms, that’s fine. If it’s the headache you suggest, then I’ll ask that same question once more. WHY would you agree to those terms?
I agree – don’t move into a house next to an airport runway and then complain about the noise. But if that seems to be the only house on the market in the town you want to live in, I understand those that would choose to move in and then not be especially happy about the situation.
Apparently I’m speaking in badly stretched analogies today.