...when it's news that a new hot Web site backed by big names and venture capital will be paying writers:
Sharon Waxman's TheWrap launched yesterday hoping to be the Politico of entertainment news. So naturally, all we wanted to know is if they pay writers.
Sharon left in our comments:
Part of our mission is to provide a home for quality journalism, and that means being willing to pay for it. Great reporting can't be done for free. Consider that an invitation to all talent out there.
Noted.
Yea for The Wrap paying writers. Boo for the fact that this is a newsflash.
It's not something I've discussed much online, but more that a few of my fellow supposedly professional writers have endured my wrath in person: I cannot abide supposedly professional writers who give their work away. If you're a good writer, you deserve to be paid for your work and the experience that goes into that work. And as with most else in the world, you get what you pay for: writers who will work for free are often worth exactly what they're paid -- that is, nothing. (And as a professional editor as well as a professional writer, I can vouch for the fact that even writers who are paid obscenely well for their prose can often be not worth paying for.)
It devalues my work, as a professional writer who not only turns in professional copy but is also perfectly happy to deal with editors and copyeditors and factcheckers and proofreaders who have questions about my work, when other writers give their work away. It devalues the work of all professional writers who expect -- and rightly so -- to be paid for their work. And it devalues the work of the writer who works for free.
And editors: Next time you need brain surgery, are you gonna go with the guy who is happy to work for free, or are you gonna go with the guy who insists that his expertise and experience is worth paying for? Who would you trust more?
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