[Note: This piece on the state of journalism is a response to a blog from Nate Thayer about an intriguing offer he received and has nothing to do with Jordan.]
Freelance journalist Nate Thayer posted on his blog an email exchange he had with Olga Khazan, the Global Editor of the Atlantic Magazine. Khazan asked if Thayer would be interested in repurposing a recent piece for the Atlantic.
Khazan’s offer was a 1200 word piece by the weekend all done without financial compensation.
Thayer wrote back: “I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children….Frankly, I will refrain from being insulted and am perplexed how one can expect to try to retain quality professional services without compensating for them. Let me know if you have perhaps mispoken.”
Thayer’s first sentence is what scares me most about my future. If a 25-year veteran gets offered zero money for work, what am I going to be offered when I enter the field?
Journalism is not keeping up with the times. Print magazines and daily papers still have not found a business model to adapt to the digital age. The Internet was supposed to be the savior of journalism. Spreading ideas became easier and this should have led to a golden age of writing.
Instead the prospects for future journalists are bleaker than bleak. How can an industry based on producing accurate timely information survive when workers are not paid?
What is most shocking is Khazan’s chutzpah. Casually offering nothing in exchange for a reporters work, like it ain’t no thang.
This reminds me of a scene from season 5 of The Wire. The Atlantic must be trying to do more with less.
Khazan clarified that the exposure Thayer would gain is compensation and that the Atlantic’s “rate even for original, reported stories is $100.”
Exposure for a writer is great, but exposure doesn’t pay the bills. And no journalist can afford to do quality work for free.
A hundred dollars a story is close to H.L. Mencken money. As in the same amount Mencken got in the 1930s from the Baltimore Sun.
One hundred dollars for an original, reported story. So much for “the life of kings.”
Shawarma for Breakfast 