A Day in the Life of a Digital Editor, 2013
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
It's not about being personal or publishing private emails; it's about a respected publication approaching an established writer and asking for free product to sell on. Doesn't matter whether it was the poor dear's first fortnight in the job or if she'd been there 25 years.
Interestingly enough, in 2001 I was the co-editor-and-chief of my high school newspaper and thought about going into journalism. But it was obvious to me then that the Internet was going to destroy a lot of careers in journalism.
It has. The only thing I still find puzzling is that some people want to major in journalism in college, or attempt to be "freelance writers."
This advice applies to any profession that has significant excess supply vs demand. Athletes, photographers, artists, actors, musicians etc... Even if an individual never makes it big (and most don't) these activities can be rewarding hobbies as long as expectations are managed properly.
I decided to go to engineering school and do music on the side.
That has been much more successful for me money wise and in a way music wise as well. I've never had to compromise my (crappy) music to make a buck.
She asked, he said no, that would normally be the end of such an interaction. But he decided to publicize the fact that his writing was worth $0 and original writing would be worth $100.
Quite a drop from the $350k he got paid by ABC for his pol pot interview in '87. He then sued them in 2002 for ~$20million, no idea how that case went, but I imagine not that well or else he'd probably be set.
I'm that poor dear's boyfriend so I've obsessed over this odd case for a few days now. :D
The most recent one on Al Jazeera really pissed her off though, because that person had written for cheap or for free for the Atlantic in the past. Which seems disingenuous at best.
Some of her writings for the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/sarah-kendzior/
Her article for Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/20133111642...
I think Sarah is trying to make a point about wage stagnation, but it is lost in a mist of links and appeals to our better selves. If money wasn't being actively redistributed towards the super wealthy there would be more money for individuals to pay for good writing. I think we can all agree on that.
But in the mean time, you take what you can get and work with what you have.
Journalists rarely think about business models, which I think is one of the main reasons that journalism is doing so poorly. Some journalists abhor the idea of even thinking about how to support their work.
I wrote a post with some suggestions on how we can pay for great writing: http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/2013/03/06/paying-for-great...
My company got a reporting series funded on Kickstarter ($15,000), others are using Kindle Singles and there are other models to explore as well. I like what The Magazine is doing too.
Sitting around saying, "well our freelancer budget is small" doesn't help the situation.
This, perhaps coupled with an appropriate sized advance would ensure that authors were being rewarded for successful work, and that The Atlantic wouldn't be pouring money into stories that only get 1,000 hits.
Given that major news can be broken over Twitter in 140 characters, paying by the word seems incredibly antiquated.
If you're responding to controversy, don't get too lengthy. It looks suspicious.
Edit: Olga's budget for purchased content is $12,000 a year? I'm going to assume her salary is significantly more than that, but why would you ask an expensive editor to "obtain/curate/manicure" work that was purchased so cheaply? It sounds like it really wouldn't be worth her time.
perhaps profit sharingbased on unique views might be a solution to the problem.
It feels a bit like the qualms you might feel during your first stint in management, where you basically enforce rules passed down from above. Where the good of 'increasing value' costs some of the well being of those you supervise, and you have to grow a big doublethink muscle to continue to think of yourself as a good person as opposed to a tool of exploitation, because, unfortunately the opportunities for win-win changes are actually few and far between.