12 ms·

A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist

194 points by duck 14y ago

iamdann 14y ago
As a journalist myself, this is extremely depressing (although unsurprising). It's also why I'm working hard to expand my portfolio of skills.
flexie 14y ago
No wonder mass media is of such poor quality if original, reported articles consumed by up to 13M readers pays $100. Guess that's supply and demand (?)
- eliben 14y ago
  According to the post, it also pays $125K / year for a full-time job with the requirement to deliver 6 articles. Doesn't sound very bad.
  - nutate 14y ago
    That doesn't add up, does it?
  - mayukh 14y ago
    That was atleast 9 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_(editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_(editor)
    - nutate 14y ago
      Exactly. Ad revenue of newspapers slipped over 50% during that time. The whole market got eaten up and destroyed, worse than the music industry could've ever dreamed. There is still a great bunch of journalism out there, like Vice (who actually did the original reporting) and then there are folks like this guy who wishes for days of yore. The Atlantic puts out plenty of great content from great writers who get little cash for their efforts. The market changed drastically on this guy and he hopes he can get more PR from this free blog post than a free byline on theatlantic.com Good luck to him.
- Terretta 14y ago
  > $100 That's the reblog rate.
  - nelsonweiss 14y ago
    "I completely understand your position, but our rate even for original, reported stories is $100." (from original story) A confusing sentence if ever I've seen one, but are they saying they're offering $100 for reblog or for something else?
willholloway 14y ago
This is a despicable trend. This devaluing of labor is happening in many fields. The offer is always the same: exposure, it's good for your career. The Huffington Post was built on this business model. Most of the writers weren't paid at all but of course Arianna cashed in to the tune of $315 million. The comedian and podcaster Duncan Trussell was invited to do a set at SXSW, for free and without even airfare being provided. Their only offer was to let him sleep on a volunteer's couch. His response was hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ6eMG-dfas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ6eMG-dfas And also and importantly SXSW enjoys a large, free labor force in the form of volunteers. Millenials really have gotten a raw deal. Many can't afford rent or savings, they are rarely offered cash as compensation for jobs their parents were happily paid for. These practices are worse than those of textile sweatshops.
- jrajav 14y ago
  > This is a despicable trend. > These practices are worse than those of textile sweatshops. I think this is a pretty harmful way of portraying the issue. Don't use up all your shocking words on something like this. Sweatshop practices and child labor are truly despicable and deserve more attention. People being less willing to pay a premium for a certain product or skill in a free market? Not so much. If it is actually a product or skill that merits the money in a changing market, and if the specific one being offered is of good quality, in the long run it will harm the one unwilling to pay. If it is not, it will harm the one offering the product or skill. There is nothing evil happening on either end of this.
  - willholloway 14y ago
    > There is nothing evil happening on either end of this. I am speaking in pure material terms. I am not injecting morality. This is a despicable trend because we are seeing emergent, widespread immiseration in advanced, developed countries. The quality of our journalism is suffering, and journalism is a bulwark against corruption in a democracy. Corruption is bad not because it is immoral but because it leads to waste, which reduces our material well being. David Simon, the creator of The Wire has spoken about how important local papers were in catching corruption at the city and state level of government. I said that this is worse than sweatshops because at least in a sweatshop the workers earn subsistence wages. > If it is actually a product or skill that merits the money in a changing market, and if the specific one being offered is of good quality, in the long run it will harm the one unwilling to pay. The product and skills are valuable. There is a demand for them. What we are witnessing is deflation. The demand is strong, the ability for the creators to be credited is what has broken down. I will not just be a passive observer in all of this. The end game to this scenario is obvious. We are looking down the barrel of a new feudalism, and I do not want a period of reduced living standards and stagnation. An entire generation has had it's prospects diminished, and the trend is only accelerating. Perhaps all that is needed here for the market to correct this is for consumers to be educated. This is a new trend, and I would like to draw people's attention to it. Do you still feel warm, fuzzy and excited when you buy a ticket to SXSW? When you know the festival organizers, bars, restaurants and hotels are all making money, the only people not making money are the performers and the volunteers that draw the crowds and make everything run? In the absence of knowledge about how SXSW works the organizers are able to exploit the performers. I am not going to keep their secret for them. I'm boycotting SXSW until their labor practices change. Who's with me?
jwr 14y ago
This will influence how I will view future articles from The Atlantic. I liked a number of them, but this is likely not an isolated incident, and from now on I will always wonder how the article was produced.
- sixtypoundhound 14y ago
  You should also read up on the disputes they have had with Reddit about how they promoted their content; earned them an official site-wide ban, if I recall correctly..
  - MisterBastahrd 14y ago
    That's not shocking. Most people who head up these corporations made it up the corporate ladder because of, not in spite of, an incredible lack of tact.
    - jseliger 14y ago
      The Atlantic is owned by David Bradley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Bradley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Bradley), and it isn't a particularly large corporation. It can't have that many employees, given that only 400,000 people subscribe to the magazine.
Spiritus 14y ago
Seriously, what is this doing on Hacker News? I'm sure there's a subreddit for this.
- Kurtz79 14y ago
  I found it very interesting, as it talks about how journalism has changed in the age of the internet. A good hacker should have a good grasp of how the world works, and how it changes over time.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - Spiritus 14y ago
    How does this help me in any way whatsoever at being a better hacker? Except don't become a freelance journalist 2013, like that ever crossed my mind. Might as well just rename the site to Random News and post stuff from every field there is.
    - panzagl 14y ago
      You're right, hackers don't produce intellectual property, and they never have issues with people not valuing it. If you think being able to sling code or design a webpage makes you immune from this trend, then maybe you don't have enough imagination to get the most out of this site.
    - Kurtz79 14y ago
      If an article is considered uninteresting by the community quickly falls out from the front page. The fact that this one is on top and has received a huge amount of comments already, makes me think that a good part of the people frequenting this site found it interesting and relevant.
    - nollidge 14y ago
      You are welcome to try out any of the other fine news establishments this great wide Internet has to offer.
davidroberts 14y ago
What good is exposure if it just exposes you to more people who will want you to work for free?
- nodata 14y ago
  Because everyone wants to be famous, of course. Apparently.
  - dclowd9901 14y ago
    I think the power of your comment will be lost in this noisy thread. What all of this hemming and hawing comes down to is that people are showing that they're willing to give up their creations for absolutely nothing, just to gain some sense of notariety. We have a celebrity-obsessed culture in the US in particular, and it's becoming clear that too many people would sell their soul just to be noticed. That's the overabundant supply side. I think, at the end of the day. That's the real problem.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- vellum 14y ago
  If you already have something to promote, like a self-published ebook on North Korea, and they let you put a few lines and an Amazon link at the end, then it might be worth it. Assuming: 30,000 page views, 2-5% conversion rate, $4.99 price (Amazon takes 30%, so $3.49 profit) You could make $2095 - $5239.
  - lenazegher 14y ago
    I know you're just spitballing here, but 30k page views is probably pretty low and a 2-5% conversion rate is definitely extremely high.
    - vellum 14y ago
      I'm not sure what kind of traffic most Atlantic articles get. I used Gawker as a reference for guesstimating pageviews. A lot of their self-reported pageviews in the sidebar are around 30k or under. You're right, 2-5% is high. But I do think an article that leads into a pitch for a topical e-book would convert well with Atlantic traffic.
davidroberts 14y ago
I've noticed an apparent decline in the quality of Atlantic recently. Maybe this has something to do with it. When you go from putting high-quality writers on retainer for $125,000 a year to trying to get them to work for free, naturally quality suffers.
- nutate 14y ago
  That offer was a decade ago, not a few years ago. You could just not renew your subscription I suppose.
  - davidroberts 14y ago
    I already stopped subscribing. About three years ago. Probably around the time they started paying $100 an article.
    - nutate 14y ago
      Which came first, that's the question, right?
jdietrich 14y ago
It's basic supply and demand. There's a glut of skilled writers willing to work for free and a dearth of people willing to pay for journalism, either through subscriptions or advertising. There's an idea that this is the cynical exploitation of journalists by publishers, but that simply wouldn't be possible if demand for writing outstripped supply. Personally, I think we'll come to accept the idea that, for the most part, writing is a leisure activity and not a profession. It's not unreasonable to imagine that the profitability of writing and publishing was just a temporary blip, as a result of a peculiar set of technological and economic conditions. Photography is the clear forerunner. Many newspapers have trained their journalists in photography and have them double up; Others are doing most of their photography through interns or very poorly-paid student freelancers. The microstock phenomenon has collapsed the value of stock images, to the point that only a small number of highly efficient studios are making good money from stock. There are just too many amateurs happy to shoot for free or for just their expenses, and they're producing images of perfectly satisfactory quality. The real villains are educational institutions, who wilfully deceive students as to the job prospects for creative careers. There are essentially no jobs whatsoever in the studio recording industry, but many thousands of graduates with degrees in related subjects. There's an implicit deceit on the part of educators, who simply "neglect" to mention that they're training students for jobs that haven't existed for twenty years. The demand for creative workers is static or in decline, while enrolment rates for related courses continues to increase steeply.
- benev 14y ago
  As a journalist, I may be biased, but I disagree. There is a glut of low quality journalism, but high quality journalism is still expensive and time consuming to produce. Doing research, finding new angles, interviewing people -- these are what take time, not simply putting words on paper (though doing that well still takes time and more expertise than most people realize). This trend towards free journalism is driving down standards to the point where 'journalism' is often now just re-hashing work with little fact checking. This could lead to real problems as it's been the journalism industry that traditionally has been the watchdog for the people. They've investigated and exposed nefarious activity in just about every sphere. More and more, I see skilled journalists leaving the profession to work in PR. The people who were checking up on businesses and politicians are now being paid by them to stop new amateur journalists finding out what's going on.
heyitswin 14y ago
Is this what's really happening at such major publications? I'm starting my own online publication, and even though we're pre-revenue I'm STILL paying our writers. Why? Because I truly believe in craft and content. Good, fresh, original content should definitely be compensated for.
- lenazegher 14y ago
  I'm curious, would you describe your project a little?
  - heyitswin 14y ago
    Surely! InsertQuarterly.com, we believe gamers are growing up and gaming 'content' in general is feeling a little outdated. We're going to publish original, fresh content from writers in the industry who are passionate about what they do. We're just trying to focus on content (the stuff that matters). Experience doesn't really matter to us, all we care about is if you have something awesome, amazing, insightful, or fresh to share :)
    - lenazegher 14y ago
      Cute name ^_^ I'll keep an eye on you guys, good luck.
    - jagermo 14y ago
      good luck, i think there is enough room for a decent gaming site (RPS is living proof). Just don't get sucked into "we need to give xx percent", that normally ruins the site.
patmcguire 14y ago
To be fair, the editor has only been on the job a month. http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the-atlantic-hires-three-makes-editorial-changes_b75517 http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the-atlantic-hires-thr...
nutate 14y ago
(tried to post this on his site, but it is awaiting moderation) I guess it always hurts to find out the going rate for your writing is $0. How much did the venerable NK News pay him I wonder. A 6 figure offer a few years ago? Sadly 2003 (when that Atlantic editor died) is not a few years back, it’s a decade ago. Journalism has changed and the freely accessible article on NK News would’ve gained slightly more traction on the Atlantic with less typing than he spent on this blog post.
danso 14y ago
Most of my entire professional career has been in traditional journalism. However, I'm new/young enough that I've almost taken it for granted that money-for-services is ancillary to exposure. Recently, a large media company asked if they could use one of my photos for a commercial campaign...and I almost said, "Sure, just take it" because it was a photo I've listed as Creative Commons. But then I thought, well, they're big media and asked to see their rate sheet...I about jumped when I saw they'd offer $1,000 for just a year's usage...for a photo that I took years ago and that I've been sharing online for free
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
eli 14y ago
Wasn't this debated to death a few years ago regarding the Huffington Post?
kmfrk 14y ago
Vote with your clicks; don't visit sites like The Atlantic and Huffington Post.
jagermo 14y ago
I got a similar offer from "hackin9". One small difference: the contact already had the article that i should have written planned for the next issue even before she answered my e-mail in which i explained that my landlord sadly doesn't want to be paid in "exposure". Contact ended abruptly
petenixey 14y ago
Both my sister and her husband are professional journalists at one of Britain's broadsheets and they have a very tough job of it. My sister was a freelance journalist for a couple of years looking for piece after piece before finally getting a job. We have a lot of discussions about payment for content and how journalists should be compensated for their work and why they deserve to be compensated well. A professional journalist works very hard indeed, they have to produce content on demand very quickly and to put aside their pride when sub-editors mash and reshape it to what (they believe) the editor asked for. Journalists have to create pieces out of events which are of little or no real interest and to do so without flinching. It's a hard job. The job of a freelance journalist is just as tough and in some ways even tougher as the majority of it is selling and pitching. I was astonished when my sister told me how often she was sending out pitch ideas to editors and how she would engage multiple editors daily and of course be rejected by most of them. Professional journalists whether freelance or retained earn their keep and the majority of them (certainly the ones who haven't reached the confines of seniority) work extremely hard. However in all of this there is something that my sister and I disagree on. In fact we've decided not to speak about it much because it's an understandably emotional subject for her and one that I feel very strongly about. And that is the topic of whether someone has a given right to receive compensation for their work. I find it very difficult to empathise with the sentiment that anyone's work has a god-given value. Software is sometimes valuable in isolation as code, on a disk but most often it's not. Years ago you could produce software and sell it on cassettes, now many of our most successful companies are ones which provide a more scalable, hosted five-nines uptime service for free than many ever even charged for. It frustrates me that writers should sit down and complain that nobody is prepared to pay them for their work. Many other industrial workers and even knowledge workers have found their skills devalued by the passage of time and have had to deal with it. Unlike all those other industries which got crushed under the wheels of time though we still fundamentally need writers. We want good writers, we need informed writers and good writing is still not in unlimited supply. The survival skill writers need is not penmanship it's entrepreneurship. This may be unpalatable but it's also unavoidable.
- d4nt 14y ago
  I sense that, for a long time, the world of journalism has told itself that it is a fundamental pillar of democratic society. While true, the implication is that society owes it something. You might even extrapolate that a journalist doing an investigation that did not result in a published story, has still added value because they have kept the authorities in check. However, the funding for this type of work only really existed as a quirk of the technology that newspapers used and now that the public has the opportunity to only pay for the stories they're interested in; I think society will need more constitutional rights regarding access to government data and a crowd-sourced monitoring effort to prevent corruption. I, like you, don't feel a moral imperative to pay someone for putting in a days work regardless of what they produce at the end of it. I would donate to political campaigns regarding constitutional rights to open data though.
codebeard 14y ago
I went to J-school. I have the benefit of holding a degree from one of the most prestigious schools in the world. I've been out of school for six years and have yet to find a single job, in spite of the half-dozen successful internships with various mega-media corporations. *A single media job.
d4nt 14y ago
It baffles me how journalism hopes to survive the disruption that the Internet brings with stunts like this, and the odd pay wall. I'm doing a bit of work with journalists at the moment, and while I think many of the individuals would like to innovate, many of the structures and institutions that exist do not seem willing, they insist in framing the issue as "how can we get someone else to pay for us to keep operating as we are now". I long to see journalism freed from the constraints that a daily print run onto dead tree once imposed on it, and re-imagined in an always evolving, interactive and yes, paid for, model. Just don't make me buy a load of content I'm not interested in, and don't try and charge me for a floor full of people who're re-hashing syndicated stories or writing fluff pieces.
davidroberts 14y ago
A good friend of mine was earning a decent salary as a tech blogger for CNET. In 2009, they let him go, and now he is barely making ends meet with some sort of deal with another site where he earns commission based on page views. I think it's a general trend.
youngtaff 14y ago
It's not just journalism. At least one major conference organizer / publisher is really skinny on speaker expenses to the extent it costs speakers money to go talk at their conferences.
expralitemonk 14y ago
Maybe journalists need to be rebranded into "intelligence gatherers." Not many people will pay for stories. They will pay for useful intel that isn't shared with a wide audience. "They" being governments, corporations, investors.
sixtypoundhound 14y ago
For those who practice SEO, there is a bit of irony here. I suspect a couple of do-follow links from The Atlantic placed within the text of the article would be relatively valuable from an SEO perspective... The market value of "acquiring" those links from a highly reputable site is likely far in excess of $100 / article; SEO considerations have disrupted value creation in the lower end of the content market. An article is often worth more for its links than readership / advertising. This was something that popped out of a study I did a while back: http://www.marginhound.com/revenue-model-study-for-small-websites/ http://www.marginhound.com/revenue-model-study-for-small-web...
- lenazegher 14y ago
  I used to write for a tiny outfit that scraped together a few thousand dollars a month in revenue and paid me ~$50 for 1000 word articles. They were approached almost daily being offered low $xxx figures to publish articles with backlinks for SEO purposes (which they refused). And this was a site with a few hundred pages of content and less than 100k uniques a month. On that kind of scale, a backlink from the Atlantic would presumably be worth thousands of dollars.
nutate 14y ago
Actually story this post is about: 3 tweets 5 facebook likes. This story: 2K tweets 3K facebook likes. Seems like people are about 1000 times more interested in behind the scenes of freelancing than his research into NK basketball.
moron4hire 14y ago
I liked this one commentor as well, "she did NOT have the budget 4 Dat, and did I know anyone who would do it for FREE?" I get this a lot from technical recruiters. "Your hourly rate is too high, but do you know anyone else?" Dude, my friends are all pros and we all come at a high price. And I'm certainly not going to do your job for you tracking them down. GTFO. Or when people in malls try to hand me flyers, "I'm not throwing your garbage away for you."
gnosis 14y ago
I wonder how many relatively wealthy HN users who are outraged about this are going to rush out and pay money to Nate Thayer for this very article. Boycotting The Atlantic is easy (and free). Paying journalists for quality content isn't.
- nkozyra 14y ago
  Well he can put an Adsense ad on his blog and we'll do exactly that, whether we read/enjoy it or not. That's how most journalism works and has worked. The content is free to consume, assuming you'll accept the advertising. Journalism/writing was always the carrot, but the ads the stick. So what's changed. Two things: 1. There's so much more writing/journalism/creative arts in general being produced that the valuation of these entities has declined (coupled with) 2. The Internet producing a culture that's less obsessed with quality, correctness and robustness. Which has led to new consumption patterns: we want a lot more in smaller chunks and it's worth less to us (in aggregate).
  - gnosis 14y ago
    "Well he can put an Adsense ad on his blog and we'll do exactly that, whether we read/enjoy it or not. That's how most journalism works and has worked." So, in other words you don't want to pay for it. You want someone else to pay for it.
    - nkozyra 14y ago
      Yes, that is how most news & information is - and has been - traditionally subsidized for centuries. It doesn't help that supply has far exceeded demand, but there is still a convertible value to content.
beatpanda 14y ago
Thanks to the Internet, there is a huge glut of awful, cliched writing that leaves you no smarter than you were before you started reading. Journalism school calls this "pumping out copy", and it's something you used to be able to build a career on. There is a frightening dearth of well-produced content from a variety of perspectives that seeks to measurably increase understanding as opposed to hit a word limit and generate pageviews. People talk about this all the time — the first question people ask me when I tell them I have a journalism degree is "what news sources do you recommend?", because the vast majority of what's out there and popular is complete garbage, and everyone knows it, and there still, in 2013, isn't a good way to verify sources or tell good journalism from propaganda. I believe people will pay for compelling content that leaves them better-informed, that they have a good reason to trust, and I believe we can use technology to go far beyond what's been possible up to this point with static, narrative storytelling. We're still terrible at providing context, perspective, and verifiability, all things the Internet has made possible, but nobody has done well yet. Nobody should pay for what, for instance, the Associated Press produces. Robots will replace them one day and that day can't come soon enough. There is very little value in what they do. But there is value in content that leaves you smarter than when you started. The methods of producing it haven't caught up with the baseline of knowledge the Internet makes possible for everyone, or the stunningly beautiful display of information that's possible on the modern Web. It hurts to see the skills gap up close - journalists in the grad program at Stanford are still totally defeated by data mining, web design (a skill they all know well for print), data visualization, non-linear storytelling, multimedia production, and the kinds of things I believe will elevate journalism in the 21st century, and nobody's paying well enough to poach the people who do have those skills. So what do we do?
- DanBC 14y ago
  > journalists in the grad program at Stanford are still totally defeated by data mining, web design (a skill they all know well for print), data visualization, non-linear storytelling, multimedia production, > So what do we do? You get journalists together with other people to do the other stuff. Journalists shouldn't be noodling around choosing fonts and colors or drawing charts - they should be gathering information and talking to people and writing best quality articles.
kevinalexbrown 14y ago
I've been thinking about the supply-demand problem lately as it applies to journalism. How is it different than other industries with willing pools of suppliers, but people are still paid well? There are many willing, raw-talented writers out there, and I also know that high quality journalism requires a lot of work and dedication, so the number of truly excellent writers is small. Likewise, there are many willing professional basketball players, and only a very select few make it. But when they do, they are extremely well compensated, despite a large pool of willing players. What's the difference between basketball and journalism? There is still a very strong demand for high quality basketball among the public. Additionally, in this case, higher quality is relatively easy for anyone to judge: you have better teams if they win more than other teams. In a supply/demand context, many will play, but very few can do it well enough to beat other professional teams so the real supply is actually small, so the players' price is actually very high. Comparing this with journalism, I wonder if there has been a decline in a) demand for or b) ability to appreciate high quality journalism or essayism. The demand for journalism is probably still reasonably high, but the public may be indiscriminate. This expands the real supply for writing from those few truly-excellent ones to a larger pool of mediocre writers. So if we lament the decay of journalism, we might wonder why we're not really demanding it. ---- I anticipate comments suggesting I am out of touch with the coming journalistic transformation. I read and enjoy many blogs, even those put out by magazines like the Economist, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, etc. But I recently began reading the print versions of these magazines again and I was astounded at what I had been missing: articles where I couldn't predict the next paragraphs based on the headlines; articles that answered my objections in the next paragraph; articles which clearly had taken a month to write. I know there's nothing about print vis-a-vis html, but when you've worked for a month on an essay instead of 10 hours on a blog post, it shows. I also anticipate comments suggesting I am an elitist. In this sense, I am: taste exists. I won't claim that only the truly-excellent should write. But I think they should be appreciated, and more importantly, aspired to. I worry that talented-but-not-yet-truly-excellent writers will think: I can work for years to become truly good at something no one will appreciate or I can just blog my heart out at crappy journalism and make a living now.
- beatpanda 14y ago
  I think there's probably more of a demand for high-quality journalism now than there's ever been, but I definitely think people's ability to appreciate it isn't there. Plenty of people would like to be able to read a 5,000 word essay, but simply can't. And that's why I think focusing on the written word itself as the vehicle for high-quality journalism is a mistake. I don't think that's the only way to do it.
rakeshsharmak 14y ago
I think Nate Thayer seems to have over-reacted to the situation. The news requested by the global editor was commodity news; it wasn't exclusive content. The problem with commodity news is not one of quality but of quantity. Much like any other commodity product, news is driven by volume. Unfortunately, demand has far outstripped the supply. In the absence of clear differentiators, organizations rely on SEO tactics, content marketing and social media tools as new distribution channels for news. Most technology-oriented solutions, however, put a different tack to the problem. They approach it from the efficiency perspective. Acquiring news (or, reporting and writing news) is an expensive activity. In fact, were it not for journalists’ famously low salaries, the returns on investment for news acquisition would be unsustainable.
netcan 14y ago
I really wish the comments hear were a little more thought out. There's an emotional reaction lashing out at The Bastards who stole the cheese. The reality is that there isn't a villain. There are some fundamental changes in the industry that have affected the amount of money and its flow. It's not malicious. It's incidental. The move online broke newspapers' business models, especially the dominant 'journalism as a delivery mechanism for ads' model. Turns out it was fragile. It also may have changed consumer demand, I think. ADD online readers can be attracted just as easily with reprinted headlines & fluff and their pageviews are worth just as little. The internet also changed supply. A lot of content is being produced for free. They are doing it for fun, they are doing it for "exposure." I have nothing against journalists. I respect the profession. I think it's important. All this adds up to a worse deal for them then before. There is no anti-journalist conspiracy now any more than there was a pro journalist conspiracy before.
DrPizza 14y ago
The only reason that people are willing to do it for free is because they believe the "exposure" myth and think that it will lead to paid work. What they don't realize is that in aggregate, their willingness to do it for free jeopardizes their ability to do it for money in the future. It's a nice little game theory problem. A single defector from the "only work for money" strategy probably benefits; the rookie journalist gets his foot in the door, gets the "exposure" and the industry connections, and so yields an advantage over his peers. But once all his peers defect from the paid strategy, the whole thing comes crashing down. None of them achieve any advantage over any other. They just drive the median compensation down towards zero. The claim that there's an abundance of high quality journalism is hogwash. There isn't. There's a glut of no-talent regurgitators. Most of them have poor knowledge of the subject matter, don't bother checking facts, don't do any original research, and generally offer little of value.
- stdbrouw 14y ago
  But in your game, not everyone wins when the equilibrium is held intact. It keeps journalism expensive which is bad for publishers and readers. All things considered the pros might outweigh the cons, but you're suggesting it's a lose-lose game which it is most certainly not. Instead it's classic supply/demand: the only reason the equilibrium crumbles so easily is because there's too much people wanting to be journalists in the first place.
forgotAgain 14y ago
I don't see it as simply an issue of supply and demand. It also has to do with the ethics of publishers who stretch fair use to its boundaries and beyond. The money quote for me in the article is: I am sure you can do what is the common practice these days and just have one of your interns rewrite the story as it was published elsewhere, but hopefully stating that is how the information was acquired. That seems to be what most of journalism is about these days. You have sites like a Business Insider whose forte is bright and colorful presentation of work copied from other sites.
danbmil99 14y ago
How is this different than, say, music? There are incredibly gifted composers and musicians in the world today, but the general public seldom hears their work. They are either independently wealthy, or more likely work at a cafe or, if they are truly lucky, have some sort of low-level academic gig. The general population has terrible taste in music, so talent is no longer appreciated. Why should journalism be any different?
nwzpaperman 14y ago
Every entrepreneur should understand the value flow before proceeding with a start-up, unless you're comfortable blowing-up investors like so many start-ups! If you don't know who your customer is and WHY they will use (pay) for your service, you have big problems ahead of you. 1) Bloganda (internet) has beaten the publishing houses for promulgating corporate (group) memes. 2) Specialized internet platforms (ebay, CL, cars.com, autotrader.com, MLS listings) match buyers and sellers more efficiently than print publications, so that's where the money flows to now. As a consequence, prev(f)ailing publishing houses can't afford to pay above market-value money for low/no-demand content. Articles are the product of the writer and the information content is what people value. A good name (brand) is a derivative (effect) of regularly supplying the information desires of a non-trivial quantity of information consumers (subscribers/readers). 3) The editorial structure of the prev(f)ailing publishing industry doesn't scale outside of local/regional markets. The internet is global, right? I've written an article about the economics of the prev(f)ailing publishing industry, why it is a hopeless structure and where I believe the ball is moving. HN hell-banned the site in week one post-beta launch, so I can't post the url here. If you're interested you can search for: "will people pay for news"
AlexMuir 14y ago
I've been looking for someone to write interesting, in-depth articles on local business. For money. I've yet to find anyone who a) wants to do it, and b) can do it. I've tried a few things - even contacting people who I know are doing unpaid 'internships' writing crappy press-release pieces. Very few even responded, and of those that did, even fewer had any grasp of investigating something. I gave up looking, and just do the writing myself - even though the opportunity cost is massive.
timack 14y ago
The Atlantic have released at statement (of sorts) about this: https://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=699462885&message_id=2523507&user_id=NJG_Atlan&group_id=0&jobid=13303265 https://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?rec...

194 points by duck 14y ago

As a journalist myself, this is extremely depressing (although unsurprising). It's also why I'm working hard to expand my portfolio of skills.

flexie 14y ago

No wonder mass media is of such poor quality if original, reported articles consumed by up to 13M readers pays $100. Guess that's supply and demand (?)

eliben 14y ago
According to the post, it also pays $125K / year for a full-time job with the requirement to deliver 6 articles. Doesn't sound very bad.
- nutate 14y ago
  That doesn't add up, does it?
- mayukh 14y ago
  That was atleast 9 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_(editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_(editor)
  - nutate 14y ago
    Exactly. Ad revenue of newspapers slipped over 50% during that time. The whole market got eaten up and destroyed, worse than the music industry could've ever dreamed. There is still a great bunch of journalism out there, like Vice (who actually did the original reporting) and then there are folks like this guy who wishes for days of yore. The Atlantic puts out plenty of great content from great writers who get little cash for their efforts. The market changed drastically on this guy and he hopes he can get more PR from this free blog post than a free byline on theatlantic.com Good luck to him.
Terretta 14y ago
> $100 That's the reblog rate.
- nelsonweiss 14y ago
  "I completely understand your position, but our rate even for original, reported stories is $100." (from original story) A confusing sentence if ever I've seen one, but are they saying they're offering $100 for reblog or for something else?

willholloway 14y ago

This is a despicable trend. This devaluing of labor is happening in many fields. The offer is always the same: exposure, it's good for your career. The Huffington Post was built on this business model. Most of the writers weren't paid at all but of course Arianna cashed in to the tune of $315 million. The comedian and podcaster Duncan Trussell was invited to do a set at SXSW, for free and without even airfare being provided. Their only offer was to let him sleep on a volunteer's couch. His response was hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ6eMG-dfas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ6eMG-dfas And also and importantly SXSW enjoys a large, free labor force in the form of volunteers. Millenials really have gotten a raw deal. Many can't afford rent or savings, they are rarely offered cash as compensation for jobs their parents were happily paid for. These practices are worse than those of textile sweatshops.

jrajav 14y ago
> This is a despicable trend. > These practices are worse than those of textile sweatshops. I think this is a pretty harmful way of portraying the issue. Don't use up all your shocking words on something like this. Sweatshop practices and child labor are truly despicable and deserve more attention. People being less willing to pay a premium for a certain product or skill in a free market? Not so much. If it is actually a product or skill that merits the money in a changing market, and if the specific one being offered is of good quality, in the long run it will harm the one unwilling to pay. If it is not, it will harm the one offering the product or skill. There is nothing evil happening on either end of this.
- willholloway 14y ago
  > There is nothing evil happening on either end of this. I am speaking in pure material terms. I am not injecting morality. This is a despicable trend because we are seeing emergent, widespread immiseration in advanced, developed countries. The quality of our journalism is suffering, and journalism is a bulwark against corruption in a democracy. Corruption is bad not because it is immoral but because it leads to waste, which reduces our material well being. David Simon, the creator of The Wire has spoken about how important local papers were in catching corruption at the city and state level of government. I said that this is worse than sweatshops because at least in a sweatshop the workers earn subsistence wages. > If it is actually a product or skill that merits the money in a changing market, and if the specific one being offered is of good quality, in the long run it will harm the one unwilling to pay. The product and skills are valuable. There is a demand for them. What we are witnessing is deflation. The demand is strong, the ability for the creators to be credited is what has broken down. I will not just be a passive observer in all of this. The end game to this scenario is obvious. We are looking down the barrel of a new feudalism, and I do not want a period of reduced living standards and stagnation. An entire generation has had it's prospects diminished, and the trend is only accelerating. Perhaps all that is needed here for the market to correct this is for consumers to be educated. This is a new trend, and I would like to draw people's attention to it. Do you still feel warm, fuzzy and excited when you buy a ticket to SXSW? When you know the festival organizers, bars, restaurants and hotels are all making money, the only people not making money are the performers and the volunteers that draw the crowds and make everything run? In the absence of knowledge about how SXSW works the organizers are able to exploit the performers. I am not going to keep their secret for them. I'm boycotting SXSW until their labor practices change. Who's with me?

jwr 14y ago

This will influence how I will view future articles from The Atlantic. I liked a number of them, but this is likely not an isolated incident, and from now on I will always wonder how the article was produced.

sixtypoundhound 14y ago
You should also read up on the disputes they have had with Reddit about how they promoted their content; earned them an official site-wide ban, if I recall correctly..
- MisterBastahrd 14y ago
  That's not shocking. Most people who head up these corporations made it up the corporate ladder because of, not in spite of, an incredible lack of tact.
  - jseliger 14y ago
    The Atlantic is owned by David Bradley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Bradley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Bradley), and it isn't a particularly large corporation. It can't have that many employees, given that only 400,000 people subscribe to the magazine.

Spiritus 14y ago

Seriously, what is this doing on Hacker News? I'm sure there's a subreddit for this.

Kurtz79 14y ago
I found it very interesting, as it talks about how journalism has changed in the age of the internet. A good hacker should have a good grasp of how the world works, and how it changes over time.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Spiritus 14y ago
  How does this help me in any way whatsoever at being a better hacker? Except don't become a freelance journalist 2013, like that ever crossed my mind. Might as well just rename the site to Random News and post stuff from every field there is.
  - panzagl 14y ago
    You're right, hackers don't produce intellectual property, and they never have issues with people not valuing it. If you think being able to sling code or design a webpage makes you immune from this trend, then maybe you don't have enough imagination to get the most out of this site.
  - Kurtz79 14y ago
    If an article is considered uninteresting by the community quickly falls out from the front page. The fact that this one is on top and has received a huge amount of comments already, makes me think that a good part of the people frequenting this site found it interesting and relevant.
  - nollidge 14y ago
    You are welcome to try out any of the other fine news establishments this great wide Internet has to offer.

davidroberts 14y ago

What good is exposure if it just exposes you to more people who will want you to work for free?

nodata 14y ago
Because everyone wants to be famous, of course. Apparently.
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  I think the power of your comment will be lost in this noisy thread. What all of this hemming and hawing comes down to is that people are showing that they're willing to give up their creations for absolutely nothing, just to gain some sense of notariety. We have a celebrity-obsessed culture in the US in particular, and it's becoming clear that too many people would sell their soul just to be noticed. That's the overabundant supply side. I think, at the end of the day. That's the real problem.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
vellum 14y ago
If you already have something to promote, like a self-published ebook on North Korea, and they let you put a few lines and an Amazon link at the end, then it might be worth it. Assuming: 30,000 page views, 2-5% conversion rate, $4.99 price (Amazon takes 30%, so $3.49 profit) You could make $2095 - $5239.
- lenazegher 14y ago
  I know you're just spitballing here, but 30k page views is probably pretty low and a 2-5% conversion rate is definitely extremely high.
  - vellum 14y ago
    I'm not sure what kind of traffic most Atlantic articles get. I used Gawker as a reference for guesstimating pageviews. A lot of their self-reported pageviews in the sidebar are around 30k or under. You're right, 2-5% is high. But I do think an article that leads into a pitch for a topical e-book would convert well with Atlantic traffic.

davidroberts 14y ago

I've noticed an apparent decline in the quality of Atlantic recently. Maybe this has something to do with it. When you go from putting high-quality writers on retainer for $125,000 a year to trying to get them to work for free, naturally quality suffers.

nutate 14y ago
That offer was a decade ago, not a few years ago. You could just not renew your subscription I suppose.
- davidroberts 14y ago
  I already stopped subscribing. About three years ago. Probably around the time they started paying $100 an article.
  - nutate 14y ago
    Which came first, that's the question, right?

jdietrich 14y ago

It's basic supply and demand. There's a glut of skilled writers willing to work for free and a dearth of people willing to pay for journalism, either through subscriptions or advertising. There's an idea that this is the cynical exploitation of journalists by publishers, but that simply wouldn't be possible if demand for writing outstripped supply. Personally, I think we'll come to accept the idea that, for the most part, writing is a leisure activity and not a profession. It's not unreasonable to imagine that the profitability of writing and publishing was just a temporary blip, as a result of a peculiar set of technological and economic conditions. Photography is the clear forerunner. Many newspapers have trained their journalists in photography and have them double up; Others are doing most of their photography through interns or very poorly-paid student freelancers. The microstock phenomenon has collapsed the value of stock images, to the point that only a small number of highly efficient studios are making good money from stock. There are just too many amateurs happy to shoot for free or for just their expenses, and they're producing images of perfectly satisfactory quality. The real villains are educational institutions, who wilfully deceive students as to the job prospects for creative careers. There are essentially no jobs whatsoever in the studio recording industry, but many thousands of graduates with degrees in related subjects. There's an implicit deceit on the part of educators, who simply "neglect" to mention that they're training students for jobs that haven't existed for twenty years. The demand for creative workers is static or in decline, while enrolment rates for related courses continues to increase steeply.

benev 14y ago
As a journalist, I may be biased, but I disagree. There is a glut of low quality journalism, but high quality journalism is still expensive and time consuming to produce. Doing research, finding new angles, interviewing people -- these are what take time, not simply putting words on paper (though doing that well still takes time and more expertise than most people realize). This trend towards free journalism is driving down standards to the point where 'journalism' is often now just re-hashing work with little fact checking. This could lead to real problems as it's been the journalism industry that traditionally has been the watchdog for the people. They've investigated and exposed nefarious activity in just about every sphere. More and more, I see skilled journalists leaving the profession to work in PR. The people who were checking up on businesses and politicians are now being paid by them to stop new amateur journalists finding out what's going on.

heyitswin 14y ago

Is this what's really happening at such major publications? I'm starting my own online publication, and even though we're pre-revenue I'm STILL paying our writers. Why? Because I truly believe in craft and content. Good, fresh, original content should definitely be compensated for.

lenazegher 14y ago
I'm curious, would you describe your project a little?
- heyitswin 14y ago
  Surely! InsertQuarterly.com, we believe gamers are growing up and gaming 'content' in general is feeling a little outdated. We're going to publish original, fresh content from writers in the industry who are passionate about what they do. We're just trying to focus on content (the stuff that matters). Experience doesn't really matter to us, all we care about is if you have something awesome, amazing, insightful, or fresh to share :)
  - lenazegher 14y ago
    Cute name ^_^ I'll keep an eye on you guys, good luck.
  - jagermo 14y ago
    good luck, i think there is enough room for a decent gaming site (RPS is living proof). Just don't get sucked into "we need to give xx percent", that normally ruins the site.

patmcguire 14y ago

To be fair, the editor has only been on the job a month. http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the-atlantic-hires-three-makes-editorial-changes_b75517 http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the-atlantic-hires-thr...

nutate 14y ago

(tried to post this on his site, but it is awaiting moderation) I guess it always hurts to find out the going rate for your writing is $0. How much did the venerable NK News pay him I wonder. A 6 figure offer a few years ago? Sadly 2003 (when that Atlantic editor died) is not a few years back, it’s a decade ago. Journalism has changed and the freely accessible article on NK News would’ve gained slightly more traction on the Atlantic with less typing than he spent on this blog post.

danso 14y ago

Most of my entire professional career has been in traditional journalism. However, I'm new/young enough that I've almost taken it for granted that money-for-services is ancillary to exposure. Recently, a large media company asked if they could use one of my photos for a commercial campaign...and I almost said, "Sure, just take it" because it was a photo I've listed as Creative Commons. But then I thought, well, they're big media and asked to see their rate sheet...I about jumped when I saw they'd offer $1,000 for just a year's usage...for a photo that I took years ago and that I've been sharing online for free

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

eli 14y ago

Wasn't this debated to death a few years ago regarding the Huffington Post?

kmfrk 14y ago

Vote with your clicks; don't visit sites like The Atlantic and Huffington Post.

jagermo 14y ago

I got a similar offer from "hackin9". One small difference: the contact already had the article that i should have written planned for the next issue even before she answered my e-mail in which i explained that my landlord sadly doesn't want to be paid in "exposure". Contact ended abruptly

petenixey 14y ago

Both my sister and her husband are professional journalists at one of Britain's broadsheets and they have a very tough job of it. My sister was a freelance journalist for a couple of years looking for piece after piece before finally getting a job. We have a lot of discussions about payment for content and how journalists should be compensated for their work and why they deserve to be compensated well. A professional journalist works very hard indeed, they have to produce content on demand very quickly and to put aside their pride when sub-editors mash and reshape it to what (they believe) the editor asked for. Journalists have to create pieces out of events which are of little or no real interest and to do so without flinching. It's a hard job. The job of a freelance journalist is just as tough and in some ways even tougher as the majority of it is selling and pitching. I was astonished when my sister told me how often she was sending out pitch ideas to editors and how she would engage multiple editors daily and of course be rejected by most of them. Professional journalists whether freelance or retained earn their keep and the majority of them (certainly the ones who haven't reached the confines of seniority) work extremely hard. However in all of this there is something that my sister and I disagree on. In fact we've decided not to speak about it much because it's an understandably emotional subject for her and one that I feel very strongly about. And that is the topic of whether someone has a given right to receive compensation for their work. I find it very difficult to empathise with the sentiment that anyone's work has a god-given value. Software is sometimes valuable in isolation as code, on a disk but most often it's not. Years ago you could produce software and sell it on cassettes, now many of our most successful companies are ones which provide a more scalable, hosted five-nines uptime service for free than many ever even charged for. It frustrates me that writers should sit down and complain that nobody is prepared to pay them for their work. Many other industrial workers and even knowledge workers have found their skills devalued by the passage of time and have had to deal with it. Unlike all those other industries which got crushed under the wheels of time though we still fundamentally need writers. We want good writers, we need informed writers and good writing is still not in unlimited supply. The survival skill writers need is not penmanship it's entrepreneurship. This may be unpalatable but it's also unavoidable.

d4nt 14y ago
I sense that, for a long time, the world of journalism has told itself that it is a fundamental pillar of democratic society. While true, the implication is that society owes it something. You might even extrapolate that a journalist doing an investigation that did not result in a published story, has still added value because they have kept the authorities in check. However, the funding for this type of work only really existed as a quirk of the technology that newspapers used and now that the public has the opportunity to only pay for the stories they're interested in; I think society will need more constitutional rights regarding access to government data and a crowd-sourced monitoring effort to prevent corruption. I, like you, don't feel a moral imperative to pay someone for putting in a days work regardless of what they produce at the end of it. I would donate to political campaigns regarding constitutional rights to open data though.

codebeard 14y ago

I went to J-school. I have the benefit of holding a degree from one of the most prestigious schools in the world. I've been out of school for six years and have yet to find a single job, in spite of the half-dozen successful internships with various mega-media corporations. *A single media job.

d4nt 14y ago

It baffles me how journalism hopes to survive the disruption that the Internet brings with stunts like this, and the odd pay wall. I'm doing a bit of work with journalists at the moment, and while I think many of the individuals would like to innovate, many of the structures and institutions that exist do not seem willing, they insist in framing the issue as "how can we get someone else to pay for us to keep operating as we are now". I long to see journalism freed from the constraints that a daily print run onto dead tree once imposed on it, and re-imagined in an always evolving, interactive and yes, paid for, model. Just don't make me buy a load of content I'm not interested in, and don't try and charge me for a floor full of people who're re-hashing syndicated stories or writing fluff pieces.

davidroberts 14y ago

A good friend of mine was earning a decent salary as a tech blogger for CNET. In 2009, they let him go, and now he is barely making ends meet with some sort of deal with another site where he earns commission based on page views. I think it's a general trend.

youngtaff 14y ago

It's not just journalism. At least one major conference organizer / publisher is really skinny on speaker expenses to the extent it costs speakers money to go talk at their conferences.

expralitemonk 14y ago

Maybe journalists need to be rebranded into "intelligence gatherers." Not many people will pay for stories. They will pay for useful intel that isn't shared with a wide audience. "They" being governments, corporations, investors.

sixtypoundhound 14y ago

For those who practice SEO, there is a bit of irony here. I suspect a couple of do-follow links from The Atlantic placed within the text of the article would be relatively valuable from an SEO perspective... The market value of "acquiring" those links from a highly reputable site is likely far in excess of $100 / article; SEO considerations have disrupted value creation in the lower end of the content market. An article is often worth more for its links than readership / advertising. This was something that popped out of a study I did a while back: http://www.marginhound.com/revenue-model-study-for-small-websites/ http://www.marginhound.com/revenue-model-study-for-small-web...

lenazegher 14y ago
I used to write for a tiny outfit that scraped together a few thousand dollars a month in revenue and paid me ~$50 for 1000 word articles. They were approached almost daily being offered low $xxx figures to publish articles with backlinks for SEO purposes (which they refused). And this was a site with a few hundred pages of content and less than 100k uniques a month. On that kind of scale, a backlink from the Atlantic would presumably be worth thousands of dollars.

nutate 14y ago

Actually story this post is about: 3 tweets 5 facebook likes. This story: 2K tweets 3K facebook likes. Seems like people are about 1000 times more interested in behind the scenes of freelancing than his research into NK basketball.

moron4hire 14y ago

I liked this one commentor as well, "she did NOT have the budget 4 Dat, and did I know anyone who would do it for FREE?" I get this a lot from technical recruiters. "Your hourly rate is too high, but do you know anyone else?" Dude, my friends are all pros and we all come at a high price. And I'm certainly not going to do your job for you tracking them down. GTFO. Or when people in malls try to hand me flyers, "I'm not throwing your garbage away for you."

gnosis 14y ago

I wonder how many relatively wealthy HN users who are outraged about this are going to rush out and pay money to Nate Thayer for this very article. Boycotting The Atlantic is easy (and free). Paying journalists for quality content isn't.

nkozyra 14y ago
Well he can put an Adsense ad on his blog and we'll do exactly that, whether we read/enjoy it or not. That's how most journalism works and has worked. The content is free to consume, assuming you'll accept the advertising. Journalism/writing was always the carrot, but the ads the stick. So what's changed. Two things: 1. There's so much more writing/journalism/creative arts in general being produced that the valuation of these entities has declined (coupled with) 2. The Internet producing a culture that's less obsessed with quality, correctness and robustness. Which has led to new consumption patterns: we want a lot more in smaller chunks and it's worth less to us (in aggregate).
- gnosis 14y ago
  "Well he can put an Adsense ad on his blog and we'll do exactly that, whether we read/enjoy it or not. That's how most journalism works and has worked." So, in other words you don't want to pay for it. You want someone else to pay for it.
  - nkozyra 14y ago
    Yes, that is how most news & information is - and has been - traditionally subsidized for centuries. It doesn't help that supply has far exceeded demand, but there is still a convertible value to content.

beatpanda 14y ago

Thanks to the Internet, there is a huge glut of awful, cliched writing that leaves you no smarter than you were before you started reading. Journalism school calls this "pumping out copy", and it's something you used to be able to build a career on. There is a frightening dearth of well-produced content from a variety of perspectives that seeks to measurably increase understanding as opposed to hit a word limit and generate pageviews. People talk about this all the time — the first question people ask me when I tell them I have a journalism degree is "what news sources do you recommend?", because the vast majority of what's out there and popular is complete garbage, and everyone knows it, and there still, in 2013, isn't a good way to verify sources or tell good journalism from propaganda. I believe people will pay for compelling content that leaves them better-informed, that they have a good reason to trust, and I believe we can use technology to go far beyond what's been possible up to this point with static, narrative storytelling. We're still terrible at providing context, perspective, and verifiability, all things the Internet has made possible, but nobody has done well yet. Nobody should pay for what, for instance, the Associated Press produces. Robots will replace them one day and that day can't come soon enough. There is very little value in what they do. But there is value in content that leaves you smarter than when you started. The methods of producing it haven't caught up with the baseline of knowledge the Internet makes possible for everyone, or the stunningly beautiful display of information that's possible on the modern Web. It hurts to see the skills gap up close - journalists in the grad program at Stanford are still totally defeated by data mining, web design (a skill they all know well for print), data visualization, non-linear storytelling, multimedia production, and the kinds of things I believe will elevate journalism in the 21st century, and nobody's paying well enough to poach the people who do have those skills. So what do we do?

DanBC 14y ago
> journalists in the grad program at Stanford are still totally defeated by data mining, web design (a skill they all know well for print), data visualization, non-linear storytelling, multimedia production, > So what do we do? You get journalists together with other people to do the other stuff. Journalists shouldn't be noodling around choosing fonts and colors or drawing charts - they should be gathering information and talking to people and writing best quality articles.

kevinalexbrown 14y ago

I've been thinking about the supply-demand problem lately as it applies to journalism. How is it different than other industries with willing pools of suppliers, but people are still paid well? There are many willing, raw-talented writers out there, and I also know that high quality journalism requires a lot of work and dedication, so the number of truly excellent writers is small. Likewise, there are many willing professional basketball players, and only a very select few make it. But when they do, they are extremely well compensated, despite a large pool of willing players. What's the difference between basketball and journalism? There is still a very strong demand for high quality basketball among the public. Additionally, in this case, higher quality is relatively easy for anyone to judge: you have better teams if they win more than other teams. In a supply/demand context, many will play, but very few can do it well enough to beat other professional teams so the real supply is actually small, so the players' price is actually very high. Comparing this with journalism, I wonder if there has been a decline in a) demand for or b) ability to appreciate high quality journalism or essayism. The demand for journalism is probably still reasonably high, but the public may be indiscriminate. This expands the real supply for writing from those few truly-excellent ones to a larger pool of mediocre writers. So if we lament the decay of journalism, we might wonder why we're not really demanding it. ---- I anticipate comments suggesting I am out of touch with the coming journalistic transformation. I read and enjoy many blogs, even those put out by magazines like the Economist, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, etc. But I recently began reading the print versions of these magazines again and I was astounded at what I had been missing: articles where I couldn't predict the next paragraphs based on the headlines; articles that answered my objections in the next paragraph; articles which clearly had taken a month to write. I know there's nothing about print vis-a-vis html, but when you've worked for a month on an essay instead of 10 hours on a blog post, it shows. I also anticipate comments suggesting I am an elitist. In this sense, I am: taste exists. I won't claim that only the truly-excellent should write. But I think they should be appreciated, and more importantly, aspired to. I worry that talented-but-not-yet-truly-excellent writers will think: I can work for years to become truly good at something no one will appreciate or I can just blog my heart out at crappy journalism and make a living now.

beatpanda 14y ago
I think there's probably more of a demand for high-quality journalism now than there's ever been, but I definitely think people's ability to appreciate it isn't there. Plenty of people would like to be able to read a 5,000 word essay, but simply can't. And that's why I think focusing on the written word itself as the vehicle for high-quality journalism is a mistake. I don't think that's the only way to do it.

rakeshsharmak 14y ago

I think Nate Thayer seems to have over-reacted to the situation. The news requested by the global editor was commodity news; it wasn't exclusive content. The problem with commodity news is not one of quality but of quantity. Much like any other commodity product, news is driven by volume. Unfortunately, demand has far outstripped the supply. In the absence of clear differentiators, organizations rely on SEO tactics, content marketing and social media tools as new distribution channels for news. Most technology-oriented solutions, however, put a different tack to the problem. They approach it from the efficiency perspective. Acquiring news (or, reporting and writing news) is an expensive activity. In fact, were it not for journalists’ famously low salaries, the returns on investment for news acquisition would be unsustainable.

netcan 14y ago

I really wish the comments hear were a little more thought out. There's an emotional reaction lashing out at The Bastards who stole the cheese. The reality is that there isn't a villain. There are some fundamental changes in the industry that have affected the amount of money and its flow. It's not malicious. It's incidental. The move online broke newspapers' business models, especially the dominant 'journalism as a delivery mechanism for ads' model. Turns out it was fragile. It also may have changed consumer demand, I think. ADD online readers can be attracted just as easily with reprinted headlines & fluff and their pageviews are worth just as little. The internet also changed supply. A lot of content is being produced for free. They are doing it for fun, they are doing it for "exposure." I have nothing against journalists. I respect the profession. I think it's important. All this adds up to a worse deal for them then before. There is no anti-journalist conspiracy now any more than there was a pro journalist conspiracy before.

DrPizza 14y ago

The only reason that people are willing to do it for free is because they believe the "exposure" myth and think that it will lead to paid work. What they don't realize is that in aggregate, their willingness to do it for free jeopardizes their ability to do it for money in the future. It's a nice little game theory problem. A single defector from the "only work for money" strategy probably benefits; the rookie journalist gets his foot in the door, gets the "exposure" and the industry connections, and so yields an advantage over his peers. But once all his peers defect from the paid strategy, the whole thing comes crashing down. None of them achieve any advantage over any other. They just drive the median compensation down towards zero. The claim that there's an abundance of high quality journalism is hogwash. There isn't. There's a glut of no-talent regurgitators. Most of them have poor knowledge of the subject matter, don't bother checking facts, don't do any original research, and generally offer little of value.

stdbrouw 14y ago
But in your game, not everyone wins when the equilibrium is held intact. It keeps journalism expensive which is bad for publishers and readers. All things considered the pros might outweigh the cons, but you're suggesting it's a lose-lose game which it is most certainly not. Instead it's classic supply/demand: the only reason the equilibrium crumbles so easily is because there's too much people wanting to be journalists in the first place.

forgotAgain 14y ago

I don't see it as simply an issue of supply and demand. It also has to do with the ethics of publishers who stretch fair use to its boundaries and beyond. The money quote for me in the article is: I am sure you can do what is the common practice these days and just have one of your interns rewrite the story as it was published elsewhere, but hopefully stating that is how the information was acquired. That seems to be what most of journalism is about these days. You have sites like a Business Insider whose forte is bright and colorful presentation of work copied from other sites.

danbmil99 14y ago

How is this different than, say, music? There are incredibly gifted composers and musicians in the world today, but the general public seldom hears their work. They are either independently wealthy, or more likely work at a cafe or, if they are truly lucky, have some sort of low-level academic gig. The general population has terrible taste in music, so talent is no longer appreciated. Why should journalism be any different?

nwzpaperman 14y ago

Every entrepreneur should understand the value flow before proceeding with a start-up, unless you're comfortable blowing-up investors like so many start-ups! If you don't know who your customer is and WHY they will use (pay) for your service, you have big problems ahead of you. 1) Bloganda (internet) has beaten the publishing houses for promulgating corporate (group) memes. 2) Specialized internet platforms (ebay, CL, cars.com, autotrader.com, MLS listings) match buyers and sellers more efficiently than print publications, so that's where the money flows to now. As a consequence, prev(f)ailing publishing houses can't afford to pay above market-value money for low/no-demand content. Articles are the product of the writer and the information content is what people value. A good name (brand) is a derivative (effect) of regularly supplying the information desires of a non-trivial quantity of information consumers (subscribers/readers). 3) The editorial structure of the prev(f)ailing publishing industry doesn't scale outside of local/regional markets. The internet is global, right? I've written an article about the economics of the prev(f)ailing publishing industry, why it is a hopeless structure and where I believe the ball is moving. HN hell-banned the site in week one post-beta launch, so I can't post the url here. If you're interested you can search for: "will people pay for news"

AlexMuir 14y ago

I've been looking for someone to write interesting, in-depth articles on local business. For money. I've yet to find anyone who a) wants to do it, and b) can do it. I've tried a few things - even contacting people who I know are doing unpaid 'internships' writing crappy press-release pieces. Very few even responded, and of those that did, even fewer had any grasp of investigating something. I gave up looking, and just do the writing myself - even though the opportunity cost is massive.

timack 14y ago

The Atlantic have released at statement (of sorts) about this: https://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=699462885&message_id=2523507&user_id=NJG_Atlan&group_id=0&jobid=13303265 https://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?rec...