Cocktails & New Media Dreams
Anyhow, like most things it’s a little more complicated than “writers should be paid.” It’s more like, “writers make choices based on a number of factors.”
Indeed.
But even with that said, I would like to remind everyone - loudly - of the following:
- No one is notably clever because they figured out a way to have permanent free labor. It’s perhaps a bit embarrassing, the sort of situation you’d wish to be temporary or contingent on emergency, and a fact that you normally want buried.
- Everyone has to pay the rent somehow. Unpaid Socialism is a glorious utopian concept (you tech people know from the FSF, Richard Stallman, GPL) but there are currently no sustainable economies based on it.
- Most of these people who can hang around for more than 2 weeks to work for someone like Rachelle for free are probably on extended vacation using Mommy and Daddy’s checking account. They do not earn their keep in the world even though they are ravenous consumers. (I am pretty sure they do not “employ” anyone commuting in from Flushing or Bay Ridge in dowdy clothes. Although some of their photographers probably fit that description.) For anyone to claim that these people are working promising “jobs”, it’s an instant and complete loss of credibility.
And so on and so forth about free labor. I am not particularly interested in nailing anyone to the cross over this sort of thing, and I know a lot of people are well connected with some of the ventures being named here (HuffPo, GofG, TheAwl, Gawker, General Electric, Disney, the entire US economy) but the point needs to be repeated, free labor is not an acceptable standard practice. It can be acceptable and effective in transient situations. As a permanent plan, it is rude at least, and illegal at worst.
