> It’s taken a decade, but content companies are now becoming independent, strong, and profitable entities. From Netflix, which pays content creators in advance

> It’s taken a decade, but content companies are now becoming independent, strong, and profitable entities. From Netflix, which pays content creators in advance for their work, to Buzzfeed, Vice, The Information, Re/code, and beyond, we’re seeing a class of independent and strong content-lead companies. Uh... huh. Netflix's model is about, what, 95% content produced for other distribution mediums (theatrical/broadcast/cable) that Netflix is paying a relative pittance for because the marginal cost of distributing them on Netflix after they've made their money elsewhere is very small and so they don't need to bring in a lot of money from Netflix in order to be worth the distribution deal. Buzzfeed is... well, you make about $100 per article writing for Buzzfeed.[1] The median salary of a journalist in the U.S. is $37,501.[2] As a conservative estimate, let's double that -- because as a Buzzfeed frelancer you aren't getting employer medical benefits, you have to pay your own payroll taxes (anyone who's ever worked freelance/contract knows that the taxes listed on a typical paycheck are only about half of the taxes that are actually paid, depending on the breaks), you aren't getting paid vacation and sick days, you have to provide your own computer, Internet, utilities, etc. So you need to earn $75,002 as a Buzzfeed writer to match the median salary of a journalist in real terms. So you need to write 750 articles for Buzzfeed in a year in order to hit that medium salary, maybe a bit fewer if you can do some longer articles at a higher rate, but that's still about the same in terms of wordcount. And what kind of content are these underpaid Buzzfeed writers actually cranking out? Go through and actually read the articles under BuzzFeed News on the front page. Right now, there's an article about Trevor Noah becoming the host of the Daily Show, which seems to mostly rely upon promotional materials put out by Noah on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, video of Noah on The Daily Show and his stand-up show, and a GQ cover he was on. Count up how many of those things are paid for directly or indirectly by someone else, mostly Comedy Central. The article on the Germanwings pilot seems cobbled together from AP, Reuters, New York Times and Sky News articles -- written by people making that $37,501 salary that our BuzzFeed writers aren't going to get. The author sees "a class of independent and strong content-lead companies." I see a bunch of places that are either piggybacking off the products of other, Old Media entities or getting by on a business model that pays people below-poverty wages for content -- and sometimes both. I don't think that's independent or strong or even content-led. 1) http://whopays.scratchmag.net/?s=buzzfeed http://whopays.scratchmag.net/?s=buzzfeed 2) http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Journalist/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Journalist/Salary