(don’t read this Monica- you’ve already heard it enough times)
I’ve done a lot of jobs in my life.
I’ve driven cabs, built houses, moved people, managed small offices, mixed mortar for masons, done friend’s taxes, worked in a hardware store… even a couple of coffeeshops and a dorm kitchen in college. The conditions in some of these jobs were so bad that they had a permanent radicalizing effect on me. But never have I seen a worse labor situation than freelance reporting.
Here’s how it works. You pitch stories. Maybe they get taken, maybe they don’t. If they get accepted, then you scramble to meet a deadline, find sources, interview them, and do research. You send a script (or a story). You wait. Revisions come back, you work with them, and then you file the story, upload the file, wipe the sweat from your brow, and try to relax.
And then you wait to get paid. And for some reason, you repeat the process.
When do you get paid? Generally, when they feel like it.
I’m not singling out any organization that I’ve worked for, in fact I will say that FSRN pays the most regularly of any of them that I’ve experienced. I’m more talking about the norms of the industry.
I have only once or twice, in any other job, had a boss fail to pay me on time. Sure, I’ve been cheated on overtime, and I won’t tell you what some of these places paid. But normally, in any blue collar job, be it a moving company or a construction outfit, you get paid once a week, in full, no delay. If there ever were to be a delay there would be hell to pay. Carpenters, masons, cab drivers and movers get mean when they don’t get their money. They break things. Threaten people. File mechanic’s leins. Things get ugly.
But in freelance reporting, there is no such gaurantee. My bosses are thousands of miles away, immune to anything threat that I have except small claims court or that I won’t work for them anymore.
And there are far more potential freelance reporters than there are jobs.
I am not writing this to bitch. This has results. What kind of normal person can tolerate not getting paid for weeks on end?
Or, better yet, who can afford to work in unpaid internships for years on end waiting for a paying gig?
Someone already affluent, from an affluent family who supports them.
So, the rest of us had better have a steady second job, or a large savings account. But how many working people in America do? And how many years do we have to work “day” jobs to pay for our reporting habits?
The worst thing is that this is true of the “alternative” media, the “left-media” more than anywhere else.
I used to wonder why it is that the media was so out of touch with ordinary working Americans. And I shouldn’t wonder, because in the re-emerging caste system in America, only those from the upper castes, beyond being the only ones likely to be able to get an education, and the only ones from backgrounds who think of doing this sort of work as an option, are some of the only ones who can afford to do this.
America needs more working-class intellectuals. But it isn’t likely to get them any time soon, and if it does, it isn’t likely to hear much from them. Not with the structure of the knowledge industries.