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From the Periodical Writers Association of Canada I Want a Raise By Leslie C. Smith
What I did not expect was that the financial remuneration would
remain essentially static throughout my career while declining steeply
in real dollar terms when inflation is taken into account. And I
did not expect to have this pittance further squeezed to the last
drop by corporate upper echelons intent on making media convergence
a reality. In other words, the fairly level playing field I started off on
12 years ago now slopes away from me at dangerously steep angle.
I am clinging to the same centre line where I began, while younger,
less experienced freelancers keep tumbling out of bounds. Here's how freelancing used to work: You pitched an idea to an
editor, he or she liked it and commissioned the work, you wrote
it up and submitted it with your invoice. If you were writing for
a newspaper, you accepted a lower fee - $.50 a word or less - than
a magazine would pay because it was a local publication. You could
therefore turn around and sell the same piece to a wide variety
of non-competing papers for extra money. If you were writing for
a magazine, you would get $1.00 a word plus compensation for any
expenses involved, mostly travel costs for research and interview
purposes. These pieces too might be re-sold in time to other magazines,
although this market was always considerably smaller, given magazines'
greater reach. Here's how present-day freelancing works: You go through the same
process of pitching an editor through to the final submission of
your piece. You are paid at either the exact same rates as before
or less, because it seems whenever a publication goes through financial
difficulties the first thing it does is cut the freelance budget,
and when times get better it conveniently forgets to reinstate this
former beneficence. The money you earn from these initial sales
is now all you get, since re-sale of pieces is next to impossible
under today's all-rights-grabbing contracts. Newspapers have become downright stingy, often making mere token
payments to writers under the assumption that the prestige of being
published by them is compensation enough. Well here's some news
for them: no matter how well seasoned, one cannot eat prestige. Even magazines are not exempt from these cheese-paring ways. I
have noticed travel costs that once were subsidised are currently
under attack. A freelance friend of mine was just assigned a story
to cover in New York where, the high-profile magazine informed her,
she was expected to find and pay for her own bed and board. More shocking was the discovery I made a few years ago that the
top rate of freelance pay, $1.00 per word, has been around since
the 1950s. There it sits, apparently carved in stone, while every
other profession, from pro athletics to prostitution, has gone through
significant compensatory adjustments over the last half century. Let's face it, a dollar would take you far further in the 1950s
than it does today. Small wonder so many talented writers I know
are opting to work almost exclusively in the corporate sector these
days. When you have ever-escalating family expenses, mortgages,
car payments and taxes to cover, you cannot go on forever without
receiving a pay hike, or at the very least a little something to
offset inflation. Then there are the young writers, just starting off, to consider.
Only the other week, someone I know told me she was going into teaching
full-time, due to the difficulty of making a living as a freelancer.
It's a pity, because she is a good writer. And it's a pity because
she is not the first of us to throw in the towel, nor will she be
the last. At a recent industry luncheon, a guest panel of editors was asked
if they knew whether any of the $150 million doled out annually
by the Canadian Magazine Fund, created in part to beef up Canadian
editorial content, found its way into freelancers' pockets. After
some initial hemming and hawing, it was conceded that it generally
doesn't. The real question here is why not? Sooner or later, the powers-that-be in the periodical world will
be forced to wake up to the fact that freelancers are not widget-makers
whose work can easily be contracted out to offshore Honduran child
labourers. We are trained craftspeople whose voices help make our
publications timely, literate and uniquely Canadian. This is of
real service to readerships, and one that would be greatly missed
if lost. Sure the bottom line is important. But freelancers, being marvellously
cost-effective, can help there too. Think about it: we do not use
your office space or supplies, your long-distance telephone lines,
your computers, photocopiers, courier services or coffee-makers.
We are not on full-time salary, are offered no sick leave or medical
benefits, take no vacation pay, expect no Christmas bonus; heck,
we don't even rate an invite your office Christmas party. So is it really asking too much to be properly compensated for
our own burgeoning bottom line expenses, not to mention our loss
of income due to market restrictions, which have been imposed upon
us against our will? When you get right down to it, doesn't everyone deserve to be given
a raise, at least once every fifty years? Leslie C. Smith is a freelance writer and president of the PWAC Toronto chapter
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