pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Although at this point, someone claiming that a media company will announce layoffs is like a psychic claiming that "something bad will happen to you in the future".

"I sense that you've....lost someone close to you....it could be a friend......or a family member.....or a pet"

anyway this sucks and i hope ilx peeps that work there survive the cuts

not pretending to be a psychic just explaining why soderbergh's posting re rates yesterday was fundamentally flawed. if anything p4k have better valuated content (esp relative to brand-building stuff like festivals and interface/tech upgrades) than places like spin which overpay for content chasing traffic to the point of hemorrhage and finally have to cut staff to appease bean counters. traffic no longer = revenue. best revenue opps come from brand-appropriate partnerships, and p4k's brand is stronger than everything else combined.

yes looks like 1st round of cuts went down @ spin media today. pure coincidence, had no idea it was happening today. to return to the original point, this will affect stringers like soderbergh b/c what is not included in pointer posting is the reduction in freelance allowances. i know some spin media people post here maybe they can offer more insight.

finally i dont know anything about the edit/brand-building/revenue model at myspace but that gravy train has to be close to terminal no? any insight is appreciated. grant land too. thanks.

-sulf

In terms of edit re Myspace Gary Suarez has said he's been doing well enough over there as a writer so who knows? Credit to him for figuring out another outlet, at least, even if the brand is fundamentally suspect.

while we're roundtabling on the subject, thought i had heard bad news about msn and christgau earlier in the year, did some googling and damn: http://consequenceofsound.net/2013/09/robert-christgaus-expert-witness-blog-shut-down-on-msn/

all MSN editorial was shut down, not just him

all freelance editorial. (including me)

yeah, the biggest casualty of that was ilxor Adrien's Headbang column.

Happily he ended up at Decibel.

Goddammit this thread has taken a depressing turn. I didn't realise how hard it was out there for US writers.

It's easier from british writers?

Dorian: it's always been the case that the only reason I'm writing at all is due to my full time job. Always.

but the problem with that is that if you are a writer, and what you know how to do is writing, that does not necessarily translate to being employable.

this is what we all get for attacking arena rock. if only there were a zeppelin or two around now the cash would be flowing!

Goddammit this thread has taken a depressing turn. I didn't realise how hard it was out there for US writers.

No pity party for me, but writing is basically all I did from, say, 1998 to a few years ago. Then there was one year where I didn't just lose several gigs, one after the other, but that those gigs themselves fundamentally ceased to exist - the mag folded, or the site went down, or the entire staff was fired and replaced by robots. It became totally untenable to do what I did with kids, because it took every last minute of free time to hustle up work, and even then the pay at the end of the long, arduous, increasingly cutthroat process was pretty low, and seemingly getting lower by the assignment. In my experience, Pitchfork was always equitable and good people and always paid on time and if you were fast, you could make OK money. But more importantly, it existed, which automatically put it on a tier above every other place I wrote for. Because, like:

They pay less than an alt-weekly does!

Is such a weird stance to take, given how many alt weekly rags are folding, or shrinking, or cutting so much in terms of space and staff and budget that there's barely any opportunity for work.

outside of ILX all of the writers i know are either writing for financial publications or maybe technical writing, i.e. product manuals. they were also not the 'best writers' out of the people i knew but the ones who were the best at getting their name out there, getting positions that would look good on the resume, etc.

No pity party for me, but writing is basically all I did from, say, 1998 to a few years ago. Then there was one year where I didn't just lose several gigs, one after the other, but that those gigs themselves fundamentally ceased to exist - the mag folded, or the site went down, or the entire staff was fired and replaced by robots.

This is pretty much my story, too. I started writing in 1996; by the mid-2000s, I had (at my peak) about a dozen outlets I was doing stuff for on a semi-regular basis, plus I had full-time work as a magazine editor. Both the music magazines I edited folded in 2009. I wrote for MSN for two years—I started the Headbang metal blog, then passed it off to Adrien when I took a job with a record label, which is where I am now. At this point, I have two outlets I regularly write for: The Wire and Jazziz. As described above, AMG (which paid below market rate but provided lots of work) and MSN (which paid really fucking well, like $750-1000 for a 1000-word feature well) cut loose all their freelancers; I don't see any way of shaping what I do into something a VVM paper would want to publish; I've pitched Pitchfork a time or two but they've got enough metal writers and don't seem to want to give jazz any real attention; etc., etc.

oh one is a newspaper journalist in a small town in colorado of like, 15,000 people, which is maybe not the best way to spend your 20s but, if there's a paycheck...

Yeah, given today's Spin news, and the other "notes from the field" above, I honestly wish that it really was just Pitchfork screwing their writers. Instead, it seems that, given the current climate, they're one of a shrinking number of actual sustainable outlets.

yeah i'm lucky to have a legacy "good-job-at-GM-in-1980" type gigs right now but holy shit i gotta get the fuck out of entertainment journalism as fast as i can

i write for Jizzazz now

I'm betting there's a "What the value of music writing?" Vice/Noisey post in the works as we speak.

Lisa Turtle is writing it to impress a boy

outside of ILX all of the writers i know are either writing for financial publications or maybe technical writing, i.e. product manuals. they were also not the 'best writers' out of the people i knew but the ones who were the best at getting their name out there, getting positions that would look good on the resume, etc.

― 乒乓, Wednesday, October 23, 2013 1:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true, i do technical writing for my full-time gig.

i've made more money off music writing this year than any of the previous 8 or so years i've done it, but i realize that's a total aberration (and is due, in part, to the fact that i've never done it full-time, and in fact got more freelance work from one publication because the editorial position i was hired to do basically ceased to exist 6 days after i was hired for it, and some of that position's work still needed to be done by freelancers).

why's it an aberration

fucking hell I knew you guys' existence was contingent but damn

because for the last few years before that my experience was similar to that of other people itt of places i'm writing for either shutting down or commissioning less writing for less money, and i have no reason to expect it won't be like that again next year. (xp)

this is the Cold Truth-

-the idea that there is no money to be made in music journalism is a fallacy. there are no safe jobs and there are very few jobs that will pay a livable wage (think sfj at new yorker or the top editors at p4k). those jobs exist of course and always will but they are increasingly rare and as we know from xgau no one is untouchable. but if you can afford to make your way up the ladder and are lucky enough to get a footing on the bottom rung you can get those gigs. (or you can write a breakout book like kloseterman or carl wilson.) better odds than winning the lottery certainly.

-no one is going to make a living as a freelancer writing record reviews or artist profiles and not supplementing elsewhere. but trying to live in brooklyn as a freelancer is insane. move to the rust belt and do phoners.

-most people trying to make money writing about music are going to end up in the same place as most musicians trying to make money making music: complaining about how it used to be and how it is not anymore. few writers are able to identify areas of need but they do exist.

-here is one: start pitching advertorials aka branded content or native advertising. it is a huge growth sector in online entertainment publishing because it is the future of the revenue model and good writers with credible authentic voices are needed to mirror the credibility and authenticity of the site without sacrificing the integrity of the house staff. basically: no one wants to do this stuff. but that is where the money is and anybody not hiring for those roles either has them filled (the exception) or has not yet come to the realization that they will need a relaible advertorialist or 2 onboard (the rule). don't pitch editors pitch sales managers. and editors. if you want cred write a blog.

it all reminds me of that alec baldwin scene in glengarry glenross: "good family man? fuck you. go home and play with your kids."

it sucks but its true writers need to adapt w the industry.

appreciating dashsnowden itt

reminds me of that al pacino scene in glengarry glen ross: "who TOLD you you could WORK with MEN"

haha u could be right i guess i just feel like i am seeing a lot of "oh yeah i used to be a writer. it's a tough racket" itt.

http://mrmarakai.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/20130629-161303.jpg

always be filing

Chuck Klosterman's watch cost more than your car.

i have a pretty good guess as to who dashsnowden is and I am lovin' it

pynchon?

Justin Timberlake

"no one is going to make a living as a freelancer writing record reviews or artist profiles and not supplementing elsewhere. but trying to live in brooklyn as a freelancer is insane. move to the rust belt and do phoners."

as much as I would like this to be true, it isn't true. or it can be true, but it undeniably helps to be where the publications are. I'm honestly not sure that I would have any of my writing gigs in 2013 were I not either in NYC or in NYC a sufficient portion of the time that I might as well just live there.

as for branded content, as someone who has actually done some of this, your model is, again, a bit optimistic. Leaving aside the fact that it's about the hundredth thing that is going to save journalism by my count: either this sort of thing is done in-house (i.e. freelancers aren't asked; in these cases the "authenticity of the house staff" line tends to be crossed at the same time as the decision to do branded content), hastily added to existing freelancers' stuff (i.e. freelancing would go on as normal, just with someone in-house slapping a logo and some italic copy on top of some thinkpiece or whatever), or outsourced to writers who come from more traditional PR/advertising backgrounds. (The "credible, authentic voice" aspect is substantially more malleable to sales-department types than you'd expect; at worst (I'm not saying everyone is like this), all writers are interchangeable. This is where you get all the mini-scandals about whatever site running sponsored content -- they get PR people to write PR pieces, which are maybe in snark-vernacular or whatnot but read like PR pieces, and people catch on.)

(plus your standard caveat that any trend in online publishing and advertising has a lifespan of about a year or two, but that should go without saying.)

I def know a few people making a living as a music freelancer and living in NYC — I've done it myself — but they''ve been in the game a long time

haha u could be right i guess i just feel like i am seeing a lot of "oh yeah i used to be a writer. it's a tough racket" itt.

it's hardly a woe is me scenario - you can do other things with your life. if you pathologically need to write about music to be happy then of course, make it work.

no one said anything about saving journalism frankly its exactly the opposite haha its where the money is though and if literally you gotta write to put food on table than you gotta chase the money and in a year or two lets meet back and figure out where the money is at that point.

well, you did say "the future of the revenue model," which is close enough.

at least bsod had the good grace to not be anonymous (and not call himself SNOWDEN lol)

like with most other good jobs post-bush, who comes from a charmed enough life to be in the position of making a living writing or making music is a narrower and narrower crew every year. pretty soon there will be just one critic and just one band

i call dibs for me and Sum 41

firsties!

you can do other things with your life. if you pathologically need to write about music to be happy then of course, make it work.

mmm yes, just walk into any of the many jobs requiring a freelance journalist's skillset that are so thick on the ground, easy