10 ms·

Journalism's dependence on part-time freelancers

98 points by jbegley 8y ago

Hard_Space 8y ago
This certainly is how a freelance tech writer feels on a bad day, though mostly we write articles like this and then think better of trying to get them published (I certainly have done this). I can live reasonably well in a paid-for apartment in Eastern Europe with the casual pieces and (mostly) regular clients I have built up in the last two years since I moved here, where I now live with my girlfriend. But it would be a hard prospect in a full-fat western city. I mitigated some of the problems by specializing in hard subjects like machine learning, NLP, and other subjects in or near AI. However, when I started to hold out for bylines and refuse ghostwriting work, frankly, my (also freelance) architect girlfriend carried the monthly can for a while. It's tough. I was a full-time editor of tech blogs in the UK, something I could probably still walk back into, but the economics don't support it. It's tougher yet if you turn down PR work as a freelancer, which is 95% of what is on offer.
mikekchar 8y ago
When I grew up I wanted to be a writer. Even now I spend at least an hour a day writing, usually a lot more. You can't really tell because my writing style is pretty awful, but I've developed an ability to explain things pretty well. I should probably write How to books :-) My parents (especially my father) were absolutely against the idea and since I also spent insane amount of times programming, I became a programmer (with a very insane and fleeting period in university where I thought it might be a good idea to be a physicist...) It's one of those things where you always wonder in the back of your head if it was the right choice. What would it have been like if I had studied writing and literature instead of computer science in school. Very likely, I think I would be writing something similar to this article. It's a tough gig and it's getting tougher by the day. I can't help but think, though, that I've met a fair number of programmers who find themselves in a similar situation. They get out of a job, go for a while and then just can't seem to get back in. Then what? Do you struggle to make it? Do you cut your losses and try something else? What if that doesn't work? It's a scary thing to contemplate.
- lallysingh 8y ago
  I think it depends on the kind of writing Have to considered blogging? Or do you only want to do news that you travel for? Programmers do 'control the means of production' when it comes to text on the web. Many programmers I know try and do both, with the other being a hobby that can get involved. Programmers have it really good right now, and that's really good motivation for staying in the field.
- Veen 8y ago
  If you were to leave development to pursue a career as a journalist, novelist, or non-fiction writer, it would be a hard slog. However, you already have a technical background, and technical writing is well paid. Also, executives at technology companies are rarely good writers, so there’s a market for people who can ghost write and blog for them (it’s how I make a living).
  - owenwil 8y ago
    I left a development career to pursue a career as a journalist (in technology) and spent a number of years doing that, but eventually burnt out on the click-driven fest that is that space. I'm now self-employed, but I make a great living as a freelance explainer, essentially. I help a lot of big and small companies better talk to their customers in particularly technical segments—it turns out that almost all of the writers or communicators in the tech industry literally have no experience either building or implementing products. It's turned out to be a great niche! I actually also wield that in a form of explaining the news, from that perspective, to help others who might be trying to transition into the industry as well in a newsletter: https://char.gd/recharged https://char.gd/recharged. All of this is to say: being a writer actually provides _so many_ transferable skills. It's just a shame that the skill itself isn't valued in isolation.
    - swtrs 8y ago
      Can I poke on how you transitioned? It was brought to me by a great colleague that I write and train technical and non-technical people well and want to see if its something I can do full time (contrasting my relatively boring ops eng day job.)
variable11 8y ago
I feel like he's missing one of the key ingredients: 1. Expertise. Nothing in the article suggested he's passionate and expert in any particular field. "Thoughts about social media" is just too vague and generic, any literate person with a computer could write such a thing. You need the passion of a Cory Doctorow, to eat and breathe a cause, a technology, a sport, a market, whatever it is. 2. Connections and Sources. In lieu of expertise, you can always be an insider. Some of the most successful and respected journalists aren't experts, but well connected to the scene they're covering, whether that's Washington politics, the NFL, the green tech industry, whatever it is. This will also build expertise. 3. Fantastic Stylist. If you're simply an engaging and entertaining writer along the lines of a Hunter S. Thompson (without of course approaching that world class level), you will also get traction. I read his entire piece and while it was interesting and well written, it didn't floor me. Too much of the article struck me as, "I have a college degree in this, where's my full-time job?" Which of those three areas above show someone that you deserve one?
Tsubasachan 8y ago
I don't know how the job market is in the US but here nobody gets a long term contract anymore. Yes I too want to have a steady job for 40 years with a nice pension plan. Sadly its 2019 not 1957.
Gimpei 8y ago
I started off in journalism just out of college in 2000. Even then, future prospects were pretty bleak. People with 10 years more experience than me (plus PhDs in comp lit) were basically deciding on comma placement. After two years, I fled the field for a completely unrelated discipline. Probably the best decision I ever made. All my friends from that time have struggled through multiple rounds of layoffs and most have eventually moved on. It's very sad because an active and well informed media is essential to a well functioning democracy. Right now the most viable model increasingly looks to be charity. I don't think this bodes well for governance, especially at the local level where journalism really has imploded.
kristianc 8y ago
Maybe it's a supply and demand problem - that there's an oversupply of long tedious rants on the state of the 'gig economy' and not enough demand to pay for them? Journalists famously grouse about not being able to pay the bills with 'exposure' but very often choose the ego boost of a 'viral column' and a Verified Twitter over the possibility of being gainfully employed doing something else.
- cwmma 8y ago
  in the article you'll note that his log tedious rant on the state of the 'gig economy' is one of his better paying articles he's gotten.
francisofascii 8y ago
Know a family member who worked for a reputable magazine as a fact checker, making about 35 K with good benefits. This was about 10 years ago. Fast forward to today. Same company, working from home only as needed, $30/hour, bringing in about 6K a year.
- mprev 8y ago
  Wow, that's a big difference. But what has changed? Was your family member doing the same amount of work (rough calc suggests around 4 hours per week) back then but in the context of a full-time job or is it just that there's less fact checking going on?
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    Well, they did have one other contractor. Also, back during the full time days, there were periods of no work or periods of waiting, due to either bad planning or maybe due to how the monthly magazine schedule works. Waiting on articles to get done, waiting for people to respond back, etc. Also probably cutting corners on fact-checking.
- otoburb 8y ago
  >>$30/hour, bringing in about 6K a year. Was that a typo where you meant to type "60K" a year? That would make more sense, as $60K divided by $30/hr would be 2000 billable hours (40hrs/week * 50 weeks, not including 2 weeks vacation). If that wasn't a typo, then 200 billable hours in an entire year (10% billable utilization) is a pretty tough way to make a living even with full benefits at the same company.
  - jsbaby608 8y ago
    He said 'as needed'. Which I assume is a handful of hours/month.
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    Not a typo. My point was supporting the notion that publishing houses are doing away with employees and hiring 1099 contract workers from home on an as needed basis. Work would come in randomly and be due in a week. Instead of paying one FTE $35K plus benefits, they were paying presumably two contractors $6K each per year. $12K per year vs $35K is a huge savings for them. Also, it is more efficient, since the monthly magazine tended to have very busy periods and very slow periods during the month.
spunker540 8y ago
Annual revenue for newspapers is down something like 70% since 2006. I always hear that Facebook and Google are largely to blame but isn’t it more just the internet at large?
- CM30 8y ago
  Yeah, it's more the internet and the social shift that came with it. Newspapers did well when they were basically the only game in town, and a lot of media is in a similar situation. They only did well because they were gatekeepers, and one of a limited few sources in their field. The internet's made it so anyone can open a media outlet, and say what they like to pretty much anyone else, so we're in an endless race to the bottom where outlets are only able to get traffic by offering their content for free, and being competed against by legions of others who don't need to charge at all.
  - pulisse 8y ago
    Print news isn't losing out because of competition from online media. The dominant factor in the decline of newspapers is loss of ad revenue: Ad spending that used to go to print ads has almost entirely moved online, and online ad revenue is almost entirely captured by Google and Facebook. If you look at a plot of print news ad revenue vs. Google ad revenue, the two trends mirror each other, with Google ad revenue growing at basically the same rate as newspaper ad revenue declines. (This story[0] has a chart that goes up to 2012 that illustrates the point.) So it's true to say that newspapers used to have a viable business model because they were "the only game in town", but what they were gatekeepers of was not content but ad space. [0] https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-print-ad-revenue/ https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-p...
    - CM30 8y ago
      Well, in part it's due to competition, few people are exactly buying newspapers any more. There's a whole lot less of a reason to subscribe or buy them from shops any more, so that revenue isn't coming back any time soon. But I guess the ad revenue made up more of their income. That's definitely been hit by Google and Facebook. Still, not sure what can really happen there. At the end of the day, Google and Facebook are better for advertisers than newspapers are. They let you track impressions, clicks, stats, etc better, they let you target users in a more fine grained way, etc. Oh, and users visit them more often too.
skilled 8y ago
In areas that I freelance the most -- design, front-end, digital growth -- it's still fairly hard to find good, long-term clients. Sometimes, it takes a year or two until an opportunity comes around that's actually worth your while. Content is in an extremely high-demand for many different niches, but the problem is that brands/people never want to pay the price you set. I have learned to simply ignore such people and keep looking for opportunities that actually reward my time appropriately. I recently had someone throw snarky comments at me because I told him that I charge on a per-word basis. Mind you, my work can be found in HuffPo, Entrepreneur, and I wouldn't be surprised if a few of you have read my stuff across many different startup blogs. But, apparently, it's me who doesn't know a thing!
- corbet 8y ago
  At LWN we try to pay generously, and would love even to bring on somebody full time. But we don't pay per word; we see that as being a lot like paying developers per line of code. Words are consumed to create an article, not created, and we value conciseness. Giving authors an incentive to pad things out just seems silly.
  - skilled 8y ago
    What do you mean "pad things"? Most of my clients have a set word limit for each article. They set the limit, and I simply don't go over it, although sometimes I do because there is a lot more to say. And sometimes I write a lot less because there isn't much else to add to the topic. I find that clients are more receptive to the per-word system because it gives them some control over how much they have to pay. If you write some bullshit articles about "1000 ways to be happy instantly must-see immediately" -- then sure, pad away. Personally, I take great pride in my portfolio and want my content to be read, shared, promoted, etc. It's an entirely different attitude. And certainly a lot less straining on your brain.
- bosie 8y ago
  Why did you decide to charge on a per-word basis?
pemulis 8y ago
I majored in creative writing, but the MFA career path looked like a pyramid scheme, so I switched to web development. After working in the field for several years, I started running the technical side of a local leaks platform called BayLeaks. (It's defunct now, but was cutting edge at the time, basically the third SecureDrop instance after The New Yorker and Wired.) I got more involved in the research and writing side, since it turned out the big problem in journalism wasn't a lack of technology, it was a lack of time and money to do research. Eventually, I made the switch to full-time freelance investigative reporting. It was hugely rewarding at a personal level and made a positive impact on people's lives, but it was also a financial catastrophe that I'm still paying for. I could no longer justify as I was approaching my 30s and planning to get married. I switched back to programming, eventually landed my current full-time job doing blockchain stuff, and really enjoy it. I miss investigative reporting, but still do a bit of research for activist friends in my free time. Eventually I'd like to make enough from my technology work to become the publisher of a small investigative outlet where I could pay other people to research and write. Given the dire economics of journalism, making a bunch of tech money to subsidize a publication would be more impactful than slogging away in poverty on my own. There's a lot of evidence that the costs of government go up as local journalism recedes, because there is no one to objectively report on waste, corruption, and inefficiency. I think that tax dollars should be set aside to fund journalism, since journalism ultimately saves money for everyone. I don't see any other big solutions that would solve this systemic problem. We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.
- alexkavon 8y ago
  > We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark. Please explain this dramatic conclusion more.
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > Please explain this dramatic conclusion more. Not OP but I'll try: have you ever looked at the massive consolidations that happen in the news space? A couple of truly independent but small papers and public TV/radio stations remain, but the rest? Owned by Murdoch, Sinclair, Axel Springer and a couple other billionaires. Coincidentally or not, Murdoch/Sinclair/Springer media massively lean towards the right/hardcore conservative edge, which basically means that the population is fed a heavy bias in news (and some programs don't even deserve that name anymore, they're outright propaganda). And these media conglomerates are those defining current politics, simply because of their massive reach capability. Media needs to be broken up if democracy is to survive - and similar with entertainment, given that Disney basically owns all major movie franchises now.
bradleyjg 8y ago
Seems kind hypocritical to have this posted on a site that has a little “web” button so rich techies can bypass paywalls. We have met the enemy and he is us.
ALittleLight 8y ago
While it's certainly a shame that freelancers struggle with being underpaid - I'm more concerned with how this impoverishes the culture. If these jobs pay so poorly, it follows that many potential journalists will do something else instead. The best potential journalists will likely have the best chance of finding more lucrative careers. What this means is that we will be left with hobbyists or less capable people doing journalism. Ideally, journalism would serve a coordination function for the culture - spreading important facts and starting important discussions. If this task is being done by the less capable, or by those who are distracted by poverty, that seems problematic - like finding out your brain isn't getting enough nutrients and so will be operating at a deficit. For the author in particular, my first thoughts were that, if he could bring in two hundred thousand dollars worth of traffic consistently for the publications he writes for, then he should be able to bring in a sizable portion of that to his own website surely, and keep a higher percentage for himself. On the other hand, if this were a random article on someone's blog, would I have read it? Well, yes, probably so if it were on the front page of hackernews - but would it have got there? Hard to say. Confusing but grim news. Tough way to start the morning...
- newswriter99 8y ago
  "If these jobs pay so poorly, it follows that many potential journalists will do something else instead." Oh wow, find my comment in this thread because you basically got my number.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- weberc2 8y ago
  > If this task is being done by the less capable, or by those who are distracted by poverty, that seems problematic Or worse--by companies or individuals who are incentivized/motivated to mislead in order to push an agenda or sow discord rather than start important conversations or share important facts.
newswriter99 8y ago
If you're from the working class and too introverted to network properly, don't try freelancing. I got out of school in 2012 at the peak of newspapers bleeding to death. All my contacts (a small pool given my non-flagship university) suggested I freelance for a living because I was young and mobile. But trying to be a freelance reporter in a hyper-competitive industry PLUS being an introvert PLUS being based in Texas PLUS not having credentials from the state's major journalism school (University of Texas in Austin) meant I was in an uphill battle. Unlike most would-be journalists I didn't have rich parents to send me money while I played newspaper reporter. So between getting offers to write for free "a great chance to pad my clips" I ended up doing low-skill blue collar jobs. Eventually I got hired by a small-town newspaper in a city you never heard of. It was worse than the blue collar jobs. Lasted about three months. Fast forward five years and I write business news. It's more money than I've ever made, it's real, impactful content, and it's in a major metropolis. Freelancing these days is for trust-fund kiddos like the author of the story. There's no place for working-class writers who are too socially introverted to play the network game.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > Freelancing these days is for trust-fund kiddos like the author of the story. What are you on about? The author has no trust fund. > There is no trust fund in my name He lives in a wet basement and has an income less than a Silicon Valley bonus check.
- ridicter 8y ago
  This was more or less my situation. I took an unpaid internship at Frontline on PBS while in college, accrued credit card debt, and realized this was a path for my richer peers--not me. They could afford to work their ways up to a financially sustainable role in the media hierarchy over the next decade of their lives; I needed something financially sustainable _now_. Having "only" your parents as a financial failsafe sucks, as in the case of this author. Having no failsafe sucks more. The latter situation is what the the vast majority of Americans experience--it's just that those of us in the prestige occupations or well-paying ones never really rub shoulders with these people. Props to the author. He's struggling mightily with the industry-wide decline, but still admitted his privilege within his situation.
daear 8y ago
I'm a writer myself, and somehow I've managed to maintain a steady freelance career for 15+ years. This article hits uncomfortably close to home. The low pay, the uncertainty, the bending of your ethics to pay rent. There are upsides, of course, including the fact that I've been a remote worker for most of my adult life, but there are days when I have to convince myself the pros outweigh the cons. The push towards clickbait makes it easier for gig writers to pick up work, while the lower cost of hiring them means publications can create more of it. Journalism does indeed suffer from this cycle, but how do we break it? I have a few ideas from my own time contributing to this monster, but implementing them isn't easy, nor guaranteed. Like several in the comments, I tried the web dev route, learned to code, etc. It didn't take, it just wasn't satisfying, and I was competing with people who lived and breathed this stuff. Maybe if I had stuck with it for a few more years I would learn to like it, but I just felt like I was purposefully ignoring what I enjoyed. I would love to toss my current mid-grade writing contracts and get back into real investigative journalism. Depth of reporting, of storytelling, is sorely needed. But doing that means dedicating more time than the gig economy allows. Hopping off the hamster wheel means falling ungraciously to the floor. Writing rarely provides a financial safety net. I'm sure other industries suffer somewhat from the gig economy, and I'm sure they gain from it as well. I don't think it's going away, but we do need to find a way to save and promote quality as we fight for quantity.
justideas 8y ago
Not to get too ideological, but the ideal of journalism as a public service is just fundamentally misaligned with the incentives of the market. We keep bemoaning (rightfully so, IMO) the downward pressure on journalists' wages, the distorting effects of ad revenue, and the crushing power of centralization. If a for-profit model is incapable of delivering this critical piece of democratic infrastructure, what alteratives exist? I can think of two other models: philanthropically-backed and state-sponsored. Both have readily apparent issues guaranteeing trust in their independence from their source of funding. We can certainly tinker around with any of these models, but I've been kicking an idea for alternative model. I've been searching in vain for an example of this, but it'd be a variant on a worker-owned cooperative. Let's imagine something called a "stakeholder-owned media cooperative" with three tiers of engagement: 1) Producer-owners (journalists, editors, etc) 2) Subscribers-owners (readers who pay dues in exchange for editorial input) 3) Readers Just to spitball some numbers: at $20/mo in dues, 300 subscriber-owners could support one producer-owner at $72,000. The incentive to join as a dues-paying member would be a voting stake in the editorial direction of the outlet. You could play with the variables to balance power in a way that is appealing to both parties: perhaps producer-owners get veto power, or can limit the set of options for editorial direction, or perhaps weight the votes. The primary goals would be twofold: 1) more closely align editorial incentives of news producers and owners 2) produce a positive externality: news that can also be consumed by passive readers, who could apply to become subscriber-owners if they cared about the editorial direction. As far as I know, nothing like this exists, but it'd be really interesting to have a kickstart-like platform for jumpstarting this sort of organization: if a certain threshold of subscriber-owners signs on (with their credit card, perhaps paying a year's subscription up front to limit financial uncertainty) then the organization is free to begin building. Anyhow, just one potential model. I'd be fascinated to find anyone who's tried something like this
- marmadukester39 8y ago
  I did - it was called Uncoverage. Happy to talk over what we learned. Also see Beacon, another failed project. Civil is not that far off from what you describe with their newsroom concept today, but they have some blockchain baggage. I think the other platforms may have been ahead of their time. I think it needs a pretty significant awareness campaign about the larger problem to work, as the value proposition is difficult for most people to grok without an understanding of the industry situation.
alain94040 8y ago
Freelance doesn't pay much at all. When I was doing it for real (many years ago), I'd get paid 20 cents per character (yes, print media pays by the character, not the word -- and no, don't use long words). More recently, famous tech blogs only pay around $50 per post. Think about that. I was lucky in tech there are other options.
pbronez 8y ago
I think journalism is a great skill set. You have to organize your thoughts, write well, learn new things quickly, interface with humans, etc. It’s disappointing that the publishing industry under-values these. I’d love to hire someone with a background in tech journalism for a full-time tech analysis role.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y ago
  It's refreshing to hear that! From my experience, it's not a widespread opinion but it is starting to crop up.
  - pbronez 8y ago
    If you’re interested, email me! Address in profile. :-)
mensetmanusman 8y ago
The ideal setup seems to be a move by journalism to editorial and logistics management, and the writing moving to freelancers. Those freelancers can be subject matter experts and speak volumes more than a random journalist jumping into a topic. Also, these can be graduate students who are often world experts who would like more publications and extra cash. I would rather move away from a system where the journalists are supposed to be polyglots.
jtr1 8y ago
I've always been curious if a variation on a the cooperative model might work. I'm imagining something like a "stakeholder-owned media cooperative" where producers (journalists, editors, etc) would share some kind of ownership stake with a base of dedicated subscribers. Paying $20/mo in dues, 300 subscriber-owners could support one journalist at $72,000. The incentive to join as a dues-paying member would be a voting stake in the editorial direction of the outlet. Most subscribers probably wouldn't want regular involvement in those decisions, but you might be able to pull off some kind of liquid democracy arrangement where subscribers could empower certain instantly recallable representatives on the editorial board. You could play with the variables to balance power/compensation in a way that is appealing to both parties: perhaps producer-owners get veto power, or can limit the set of options for editorial direction, or perhaps votes are weighted toward one party or the other. The primary goals would be twofold: 1) fund journalistm 2) generate trust by aligning the incentives of readership/editorial. The wider the base of subscribers, the more public buy-in, the more funding to expand the newsroom. You might even produce a positive externality: news that can also be consumed by passive readers, who could apply to become subscriber-owners if they become invested in the editorial direction. It'd be tough to bootstrap an organization like this without an injection of capital and loss of control. It'd be cool if a kickstarter-like platform existed where a threshold of supporters could sign on before the project kicked into gear.

98 points by jbegley 8y ago

This certainly is how a freelance tech writer feels on a bad day, though mostly we write articles like this and then think better of trying to get them published (I certainly have done this). I can live reasonably well in a paid-for apartment in Eastern Europe with the casual pieces and (mostly) regular clients I have built up in the last two years since I moved here, where I now live with my girlfriend. But it would be a hard prospect in a full-fat western city. I mitigated some of the problems by specializing in hard subjects like machine learning, NLP, and other subjects in or near AI. However, when I started to hold out for bylines and refuse ghostwriting work, frankly, my (also freelance) architect girlfriend carried the monthly can for a while. It's tough. I was a full-time editor of tech blogs in the UK, something I could probably still walk back into, but the economics don't support it. It's tougher yet if you turn down PR work as a freelancer, which is 95% of what is on offer.

mikekchar 8y ago

When I grew up I wanted to be a writer. Even now I spend at least an hour a day writing, usually a lot more. You can't really tell because my writing style is pretty awful, but I've developed an ability to explain things pretty well. I should probably write How to books :-) My parents (especially my father) were absolutely against the idea and since I also spent insane amount of times programming, I became a programmer (with a very insane and fleeting period in university where I thought it might be a good idea to be a physicist...) It's one of those things where you always wonder in the back of your head if it was the right choice. What would it have been like if I had studied writing and literature instead of computer science in school. Very likely, I think I would be writing something similar to this article. It's a tough gig and it's getting tougher by the day. I can't help but think, though, that I've met a fair number of programmers who find themselves in a similar situation. They get out of a job, go for a while and then just can't seem to get back in. Then what? Do you struggle to make it? Do you cut your losses and try something else? What if that doesn't work? It's a scary thing to contemplate.

lallysingh 8y ago
I think it depends on the kind of writing Have to considered blogging? Or do you only want to do news that you travel for? Programmers do 'control the means of production' when it comes to text on the web. Many programmers I know try and do both, with the other being a hobby that can get involved. Programmers have it really good right now, and that's really good motivation for staying in the field.
Veen 8y ago
If you were to leave development to pursue a career as a journalist, novelist, or non-fiction writer, it would be a hard slog. However, you already have a technical background, and technical writing is well paid. Also, executives at technology companies are rarely good writers, so there’s a market for people who can ghost write and blog for them (it’s how I make a living).
- owenwil 8y ago
  I left a development career to pursue a career as a journalist (in technology) and spent a number of years doing that, but eventually burnt out on the click-driven fest that is that space. I'm now self-employed, but I make a great living as a freelance explainer, essentially. I help a lot of big and small companies better talk to their customers in particularly technical segments—it turns out that almost all of the writers or communicators in the tech industry literally have no experience either building or implementing products. It's turned out to be a great niche! I actually also wield that in a form of explaining the news, from that perspective, to help others who might be trying to transition into the industry as well in a newsletter: https://char.gd/recharged https://char.gd/recharged. All of this is to say: being a writer actually provides _so many_ transferable skills. It's just a shame that the skill itself isn't valued in isolation.
  - swtrs 8y ago
    Can I poke on how you transitioned? It was brought to me by a great colleague that I write and train technical and non-technical people well and want to see if its something I can do full time (contrasting my relatively boring ops eng day job.)

variable11 8y ago

I feel like he's missing one of the key ingredients: 1. Expertise. Nothing in the article suggested he's passionate and expert in any particular field. "Thoughts about social media" is just too vague and generic, any literate person with a computer could write such a thing. You need the passion of a Cory Doctorow, to eat and breathe a cause, a technology, a sport, a market, whatever it is. 2. Connections and Sources. In lieu of expertise, you can always be an insider. Some of the most successful and respected journalists aren't experts, but well connected to the scene they're covering, whether that's Washington politics, the NFL, the green tech industry, whatever it is. This will also build expertise. 3. Fantastic Stylist. If you're simply an engaging and entertaining writer along the lines of a Hunter S. Thompson (without of course approaching that world class level), you will also get traction. I read his entire piece and while it was interesting and well written, it didn't floor me. Too much of the article struck me as, "I have a college degree in this, where's my full-time job?" Which of those three areas above show someone that you deserve one?

Tsubasachan 8y ago

I don't know how the job market is in the US but here nobody gets a long term contract anymore. Yes I too want to have a steady job for 40 years with a nice pension plan. Sadly its 2019 not 1957.

Gimpei 8y ago

I started off in journalism just out of college in 2000. Even then, future prospects were pretty bleak. People with 10 years more experience than me (plus PhDs in comp lit) were basically deciding on comma placement. After two years, I fled the field for a completely unrelated discipline. Probably the best decision I ever made. All my friends from that time have struggled through multiple rounds of layoffs and most have eventually moved on. It's very sad because an active and well informed media is essential to a well functioning democracy. Right now the most viable model increasingly looks to be charity. I don't think this bodes well for governance, especially at the local level where journalism really has imploded.

kristianc 8y ago

Maybe it's a supply and demand problem - that there's an oversupply of long tedious rants on the state of the 'gig economy' and not enough demand to pay for them? Journalists famously grouse about not being able to pay the bills with 'exposure' but very often choose the ego boost of a 'viral column' and a Verified Twitter over the possibility of being gainfully employed doing something else.

cwmma 8y ago
in the article you'll note that his log tedious rant on the state of the 'gig economy' is one of his better paying articles he's gotten.

francisofascii 8y ago

Know a family member who worked for a reputable magazine as a fact checker, making about 35 K with good benefits. This was about 10 years ago. Fast forward to today. Same company, working from home only as needed, $30/hour, bringing in about 6K a year.

mprev 8y ago
Wow, that's a big difference. But what has changed? Was your family member doing the same amount of work (rough calc suggests around 4 hours per week) back then but in the context of a full-time job or is it just that there's less fact checking going on?
- francisofascii 8y ago
  Well, they did have one other contractor. Also, back during the full time days, there were periods of no work or periods of waiting, due to either bad planning or maybe due to how the monthly magazine schedule works. Waiting on articles to get done, waiting for people to respond back, etc. Also probably cutting corners on fact-checking.
otoburb 8y ago
>>$30/hour, bringing in about 6K a year. Was that a typo where you meant to type "60K" a year? That would make more sense, as $60K divided by $30/hr would be 2000 billable hours (40hrs/week * 50 weeks, not including 2 weeks vacation). If that wasn't a typo, then 200 billable hours in an entire year (10% billable utilization) is a pretty tough way to make a living even with full benefits at the same company.
- jsbaby608 8y ago
  He said 'as needed'. Which I assume is a handful of hours/month.
- francisofascii 8y ago
  Not a typo. My point was supporting the notion that publishing houses are doing away with employees and hiring 1099 contract workers from home on an as needed basis. Work would come in randomly and be due in a week. Instead of paying one FTE $35K plus benefits, they were paying presumably two contractors $6K each per year. $12K per year vs $35K is a huge savings for them. Also, it is more efficient, since the monthly magazine tended to have very busy periods and very slow periods during the month.

spunker540 8y ago

Annual revenue for newspapers is down something like 70% since 2006. I always hear that Facebook and Google are largely to blame but isn’t it more just the internet at large?

CM30 8y ago
Yeah, it's more the internet and the social shift that came with it. Newspapers did well when they were basically the only game in town, and a lot of media is in a similar situation. They only did well because they were gatekeepers, and one of a limited few sources in their field. The internet's made it so anyone can open a media outlet, and say what they like to pretty much anyone else, so we're in an endless race to the bottom where outlets are only able to get traffic by offering their content for free, and being competed against by legions of others who don't need to charge at all.
- pulisse 8y ago
  Print news isn't losing out because of competition from online media. The dominant factor in the decline of newspapers is loss of ad revenue: Ad spending that used to go to print ads has almost entirely moved online, and online ad revenue is almost entirely captured by Google and Facebook. If you look at a plot of print news ad revenue vs. Google ad revenue, the two trends mirror each other, with Google ad revenue growing at basically the same rate as newspaper ad revenue declines. (This story[0] has a chart that goes up to 2012 that illustrates the point.) So it's true to say that newspapers used to have a viable business model because they were "the only game in town", but what they were gatekeepers of was not content but ad space. [0] https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-print-ad-revenue/ https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-p...
  - CM30 8y ago
    Well, in part it's due to competition, few people are exactly buying newspapers any more. There's a whole lot less of a reason to subscribe or buy them from shops any more, so that revenue isn't coming back any time soon. But I guess the ad revenue made up more of their income. That's definitely been hit by Google and Facebook. Still, not sure what can really happen there. At the end of the day, Google and Facebook are better for advertisers than newspapers are. They let you track impressions, clicks, stats, etc better, they let you target users in a more fine grained way, etc. Oh, and users visit them more often too.

skilled 8y ago

In areas that I freelance the most -- design, front-end, digital growth -- it's still fairly hard to find good, long-term clients. Sometimes, it takes a year or two until an opportunity comes around that's actually worth your while. Content is in an extremely high-demand for many different niches, but the problem is that brands/people never want to pay the price you set. I have learned to simply ignore such people and keep looking for opportunities that actually reward my time appropriately. I recently had someone throw snarky comments at me because I told him that I charge on a per-word basis. Mind you, my work can be found in HuffPo, Entrepreneur, and I wouldn't be surprised if a few of you have read my stuff across many different startup blogs. But, apparently, it's me who doesn't know a thing!

corbet 8y ago
At LWN we try to pay generously, and would love even to bring on somebody full time. But we don't pay per word; we see that as being a lot like paying developers per line of code. Words are consumed to create an article, not created, and we value conciseness. Giving authors an incentive to pad things out just seems silly.
- skilled 8y ago
  What do you mean "pad things"? Most of my clients have a set word limit for each article. They set the limit, and I simply don't go over it, although sometimes I do because there is a lot more to say. And sometimes I write a lot less because there isn't much else to add to the topic. I find that clients are more receptive to the per-word system because it gives them some control over how much they have to pay. If you write some bullshit articles about "1000 ways to be happy instantly must-see immediately" -- then sure, pad away. Personally, I take great pride in my portfolio and want my content to be read, shared, promoted, etc. It's an entirely different attitude. And certainly a lot less straining on your brain.
bosie 8y ago
Why did you decide to charge on a per-word basis?

pemulis 8y ago

I majored in creative writing, but the MFA career path looked like a pyramid scheme, so I switched to web development. After working in the field for several years, I started running the technical side of a local leaks platform called BayLeaks. (It's defunct now, but was cutting edge at the time, basically the third SecureDrop instance after The New Yorker and Wired.) I got more involved in the research and writing side, since it turned out the big problem in journalism wasn't a lack of technology, it was a lack of time and money to do research. Eventually, I made the switch to full-time freelance investigative reporting. It was hugely rewarding at a personal level and made a positive impact on people's lives, but it was also a financial catastrophe that I'm still paying for. I could no longer justify as I was approaching my 30s and planning to get married. I switched back to programming, eventually landed my current full-time job doing blockchain stuff, and really enjoy it. I miss investigative reporting, but still do a bit of research for activist friends in my free time. Eventually I'd like to make enough from my technology work to become the publisher of a small investigative outlet where I could pay other people to research and write. Given the dire economics of journalism, making a bunch of tech money to subsidize a publication would be more impactful than slogging away in poverty on my own. There's a lot of evidence that the costs of government go up as local journalism recedes, because there is no one to objectively report on waste, corruption, and inefficiency. I think that tax dollars should be set aside to fund journalism, since journalism ultimately saves money for everyone. I don't see any other big solutions that would solve this systemic problem. We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.

alexkavon 8y ago
> We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark. Please explain this dramatic conclusion more.
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > Please explain this dramatic conclusion more. Not OP but I'll try: have you ever looked at the massive consolidations that happen in the news space? A couple of truly independent but small papers and public TV/radio stations remain, but the rest? Owned by Murdoch, Sinclair, Axel Springer and a couple other billionaires. Coincidentally or not, Murdoch/Sinclair/Springer media massively lean towards the right/hardcore conservative edge, which basically means that the population is fed a heavy bias in news (and some programs don't even deserve that name anymore, they're outright propaganda). And these media conglomerates are those defining current politics, simply because of their massive reach capability. Media needs to be broken up if democracy is to survive - and similar with entertainment, given that Disney basically owns all major movie franchises now.

bradleyjg 8y ago

Seems kind hypocritical to have this posted on a site that has a little “web” button so rich techies can bypass paywalls. We have met the enemy and he is us.

ALittleLight 8y ago

While it's certainly a shame that freelancers struggle with being underpaid - I'm more concerned with how this impoverishes the culture. If these jobs pay so poorly, it follows that many potential journalists will do something else instead. The best potential journalists will likely have the best chance of finding more lucrative careers. What this means is that we will be left with hobbyists or less capable people doing journalism. Ideally, journalism would serve a coordination function for the culture - spreading important facts and starting important discussions. If this task is being done by the less capable, or by those who are distracted by poverty, that seems problematic - like finding out your brain isn't getting enough nutrients and so will be operating at a deficit. For the author in particular, my first thoughts were that, if he could bring in two hundred thousand dollars worth of traffic consistently for the publications he writes for, then he should be able to bring in a sizable portion of that to his own website surely, and keep a higher percentage for himself. On the other hand, if this were a random article on someone's blog, would I have read it? Well, yes, probably so if it were on the front page of hackernews - but would it have got there? Hard to say. Confusing but grim news. Tough way to start the morning...

newswriter99 8y ago
"If these jobs pay so poorly, it follows that many potential journalists will do something else instead." Oh wow, find my comment in this thread because you basically got my number.
deleted 8y ago
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weberc2 8y ago
> If this task is being done by the less capable, or by those who are distracted by poverty, that seems problematic Or worse--by companies or individuals who are incentivized/motivated to mislead in order to push an agenda or sow discord rather than start important conversations or share important facts.

newswriter99 8y ago

If you're from the working class and too introverted to network properly, don't try freelancing. I got out of school in 2012 at the peak of newspapers bleeding to death. All my contacts (a small pool given my non-flagship university) suggested I freelance for a living because I was young and mobile. But trying to be a freelance reporter in a hyper-competitive industry PLUS being an introvert PLUS being based in Texas PLUS not having credentials from the state's major journalism school (University of Texas in Austin) meant I was in an uphill battle. Unlike most would-be journalists I didn't have rich parents to send me money while I played newspaper reporter. So between getting offers to write for free "a great chance to pad my clips" I ended up doing low-skill blue collar jobs. Eventually I got hired by a small-town newspaper in a city you never heard of. It was worse than the blue collar jobs. Lasted about three months. Fast forward five years and I write business news. It's more money than I've ever made, it's real, impactful content, and it's in a major metropolis. Freelancing these days is for trust-fund kiddos like the author of the story. There's no place for working-class writers who are too socially introverted to play the network game.

chrisseaton 8y ago
> Freelancing these days is for trust-fund kiddos like the author of the story. What are you on about? The author has no trust fund. > There is no trust fund in my name He lives in a wet basement and has an income less than a Silicon Valley bonus check.
ridicter 8y ago
This was more or less my situation. I took an unpaid internship at Frontline on PBS while in college, accrued credit card debt, and realized this was a path for my richer peers--not me. They could afford to work their ways up to a financially sustainable role in the media hierarchy over the next decade of their lives; I needed something financially sustainable _now_. Having "only" your parents as a financial failsafe sucks, as in the case of this author. Having no failsafe sucks more. The latter situation is what the the vast majority of Americans experience--it's just that those of us in the prestige occupations or well-paying ones never really rub shoulders with these people. Props to the author. He's struggling mightily with the industry-wide decline, but still admitted his privilege within his situation.

daear 8y ago

I'm a writer myself, and somehow I've managed to maintain a steady freelance career for 15+ years. This article hits uncomfortably close to home. The low pay, the uncertainty, the bending of your ethics to pay rent. There are upsides, of course, including the fact that I've been a remote worker for most of my adult life, but there are days when I have to convince myself the pros outweigh the cons. The push towards clickbait makes it easier for gig writers to pick up work, while the lower cost of hiring them means publications can create more of it. Journalism does indeed suffer from this cycle, but how do we break it? I have a few ideas from my own time contributing to this monster, but implementing them isn't easy, nor guaranteed. Like several in the comments, I tried the web dev route, learned to code, etc. It didn't take, it just wasn't satisfying, and I was competing with people who lived and breathed this stuff. Maybe if I had stuck with it for a few more years I would learn to like it, but I just felt like I was purposefully ignoring what I enjoyed. I would love to toss my current mid-grade writing contracts and get back into real investigative journalism. Depth of reporting, of storytelling, is sorely needed. But doing that means dedicating more time than the gig economy allows. Hopping off the hamster wheel means falling ungraciously to the floor. Writing rarely provides a financial safety net. I'm sure other industries suffer somewhat from the gig economy, and I'm sure they gain from it as well. I don't think it's going away, but we do need to find a way to save and promote quality as we fight for quantity.

justideas 8y ago

Not to get too ideological, but the ideal of journalism as a public service is just fundamentally misaligned with the incentives of the market. We keep bemoaning (rightfully so, IMO) the downward pressure on journalists' wages, the distorting effects of ad revenue, and the crushing power of centralization. If a for-profit model is incapable of delivering this critical piece of democratic infrastructure, what alteratives exist? I can think of two other models: philanthropically-backed and state-sponsored. Both have readily apparent issues guaranteeing trust in their independence from their source of funding. We can certainly tinker around with any of these models, but I've been kicking an idea for alternative model. I've been searching in vain for an example of this, but it'd be a variant on a worker-owned cooperative. Let's imagine something called a "stakeholder-owned media cooperative" with three tiers of engagement: 1) Producer-owners (journalists, editors, etc) 2) Subscribers-owners (readers who pay dues in exchange for editorial input) 3) Readers Just to spitball some numbers: at $20/mo in dues, 300 subscriber-owners could support one producer-owner at $72,000. The incentive to join as a dues-paying member would be a voting stake in the editorial direction of the outlet. You could play with the variables to balance power in a way that is appealing to both parties: perhaps producer-owners get veto power, or can limit the set of options for editorial direction, or perhaps weight the votes. The primary goals would be twofold: 1) more closely align editorial incentives of news producers and owners 2) produce a positive externality: news that can also be consumed by passive readers, who could apply to become subscriber-owners if they cared about the editorial direction. As far as I know, nothing like this exists, but it'd be really interesting to have a kickstart-like platform for jumpstarting this sort of organization: if a certain threshold of subscriber-owners signs on (with their credit card, perhaps paying a year's subscription up front to limit financial uncertainty) then the organization is free to begin building. Anyhow, just one potential model. I'd be fascinated to find anyone who's tried something like this

marmadukester39 8y ago
I did - it was called Uncoverage. Happy to talk over what we learned. Also see Beacon, another failed project. Civil is not that far off from what you describe with their newsroom concept today, but they have some blockchain baggage. I think the other platforms may have been ahead of their time. I think it needs a pretty significant awareness campaign about the larger problem to work, as the value proposition is difficult for most people to grok without an understanding of the industry situation.

alain94040 8y ago

Freelance doesn't pay much at all. When I was doing it for real (many years ago), I'd get paid 20 cents per character (yes, print media pays by the character, not the word -- and no, don't use long words). More recently, famous tech blogs only pay around $50 per post. Think about that. I was lucky in tech there are other options.

pbronez 8y ago

I think journalism is a great skill set. You have to organize your thoughts, write well, learn new things quickly, interface with humans, etc. It’s disappointing that the publishing industry under-values these. I’d love to hire someone with a background in tech journalism for a full-time tech analysis role.

bitxbitxbitcoin 8y ago
It's refreshing to hear that! From my experience, it's not a widespread opinion but it is starting to crop up.
- pbronez 8y ago
  If you’re interested, email me! Address in profile. :-)

mensetmanusman 8y ago

The ideal setup seems to be a move by journalism to editorial and logistics management, and the writing moving to freelancers. Those freelancers can be subject matter experts and speak volumes more than a random journalist jumping into a topic. Also, these can be graduate students who are often world experts who would like more publications and extra cash. I would rather move away from a system where the journalists are supposed to be polyglots.

jtr1 8y ago

I've always been curious if a variation on a the cooperative model might work. I'm imagining something like a "stakeholder-owned media cooperative" where producers (journalists, editors, etc) would share some kind of ownership stake with a base of dedicated subscribers. Paying $20/mo in dues, 300 subscriber-owners could support one journalist at $72,000. The incentive to join as a dues-paying member would be a voting stake in the editorial direction of the outlet. Most subscribers probably wouldn't want regular involvement in those decisions, but you might be able to pull off some kind of liquid democracy arrangement where subscribers could empower certain instantly recallable representatives on the editorial board. You could play with the variables to balance power/compensation in a way that is appealing to both parties: perhaps producer-owners get veto power, or can limit the set of options for editorial direction, or perhaps votes are weighted toward one party or the other. The primary goals would be twofold: 1) fund journalistm 2) generate trust by aligning the incentives of readership/editorial. The wider the base of subscribers, the more public buy-in, the more funding to expand the newsroom. You might even produce a positive externality: news that can also be consumed by passive readers, who could apply to become subscriber-owners if they become invested in the editorial direction. It'd be tough to bootstrap an organization like this without an injection of capital and loss of control. It'd be cool if a kickstarter-like platform existed where a threshold of supporters could sign on before the project kicked into gear.