Know what sets my blood to boiling? This shit. Matt Welch excerpts an LA Times piece dissing freelance journalists thusly:
"Freelancers are the migrant farmworkers of journalism -- cheap labor that fills the gaps left by editorial downsizing and dwindling advertising revenue. As they scramble from publication to publication to make a living, some practice ethical relativism."
I've been a freelancer/contractor my whole goodamn career, and it's not because I couldn't get a full-time job at a goddamn daily newspaper (as if I would have even wanted one!).
Shit, man.
First of all, as a freelancer I have to be extra-ethical, because I have no legal protection from the publications for which I write, with the exception of perhaps one. The standard freelance contract does not protect a writer from lawsuit, however spurious.
Anyway, the really important writers I most admire were contract journalists--especially George Bernard Shaw and Lester Bangs.
Oh, fuck this.
I have work to do!
Kate
"Freelancers are the migrant farmworkers of journalism -- cheap labor that fills the gaps left by editorial downsizing and dwindling advertising revenue. As they scramble from publication to publication to make a living, some practice ethical relativism."
I've been a freelancer/contractor my whole goodamn career, and it's not because I couldn't get a full-time job at a goddamn daily newspaper (as if I would have even wanted one!).
Shit, man.
First of all, as a freelancer I have to be extra-ethical, because I have no legal protection from the publications for which I write, with the exception of perhaps one. The standard freelance contract does not protect a writer from lawsuit, however spurious.
Anyway, the really important writers I most admire were contract journalists--especially George Bernard Shaw and Lester Bangs.
Oh, fuck this.
I have work to do!
Kate
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