A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013
Here is an exchange between the Global Editor of the Atlantic Magazine and myself this afternoon attempting to solicit my professional services for an article they sought to publish after reading my story “25 Years of Slam Dunk Diplomacy: Rodman trip comes after 25 years of basketball diplomacy between U.S. and North Korea” here http://www.nknews.org/2013/03/slam-dunk-diplomacy/ at NKNews.org
From the Atlantic Magazine:
On Mar 4, 2013 3:27 PM, “olga khazan” <okhazan@theatlantic.com> wrote:
Hi there — I’m the global editor for the Atlantic, and I’m trying to reach Nate Thayer to see if he’d be interested in repurposing his recent basketball diplomacy post on our site.
Could someone connect me with him, please?
thanks,
Olga Khazan
okhazan@theatlantic.com
From the head of NK News, who originally published the piece this morning:
Hi that piece is copy right to NK News, so please engage us mutually.
Thanks, tad
From the Atlantic:
Sure. Thanks Nate and Tad…I was just wondering if you’d be interested in adapting a version of that for the Atlantic. Let me know if you’d be interested.
thanks,
Olga
From me:
Hi Olga:
Give me a shout at 443 205 9162 in D.C. and I’d be delighted to see whether we can work something out.
Best,
Nate Thayer
From the Atlantic:
Sure, I’ll call you in a few minutes.
After a brief phone call where no specifics were really discussed, and she requested I email her:
Hi Olga: What did you have in mind for length, storyline, deadline, and fees for the basketball diplomacy piece. Or any other specifics. I think we can work something out, but I want to make sure I have the time to do it properly to meet your deadline, so give me a shout back when you have the earliest chance.
best,
Nate Thayer
From the Atlantic:
Thanks for responding. Maybe by the end of the week? 1,200 words? We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month. I understand if that’s not a workable arrangement for you, I just wanted to see if you were interested.
Thanks so much again for your time. A great piece!
From me:
Thanks Olga:
I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children. I know several people who write for the Atlantic who of course get paid. I appreciate your interest, but, while I respect the Atlantic, and have several friends who write for it, I have bills to pay and cannot expect to do so by giving my work away for free to a for profit company so they can make money off of my efforts. 1200 words by the end of the week would be fine, and I can assure you it would be well received, but not for free. Frankly, I will refrain from being insulted and am perplexed how one can expect to try to retain quality professional services without compensating for them. Let me know if you have perhaps mispoken.
best,
Nate
From the Atlantic:
Hi Nate — I completely understand your position, but our rate even for original, reported stories is $100. I am out of freelance money right now, I enjoyed your post, and I thought you’d be willing to summarize it for posting for a wider audience without doing any additional legwork. Some journalists use our platform as a way to gain more exposure for whatever professional goals they might have, but that’s not right for everyone and it’s of course perfectly reasonable to decline.
Thank you and I’m sorry to have offended you.
Best,
Olga
From me:
Hi Olga: No offense taken and no worries. I am sure you are aware of the changing, deteriorating condition of our profession and the difficulty for serious journalists to make a living through their work resulting in the decline of the quality of news in general. Ironically, a few years back I was offered a staff job with the Atlantic to write 6 articles a year for a retainer of $125,000, with the right to publish elsewhere in addition. The then editor, Michael Kelly, was killed while we were both in Iraq, and we both, as it were, moved on to different places. I don’t have a problem with exposure but I do with paying my bills.
I am sure you can do what is the common practice these days and just have one of your interns rewrite the story as it was published elsewhere, but hopefully stating that is how the information was acquired. If you ever are interested in a quality story on North Korea and wiling to pay for it, please do give me a shout. I do enjoy reading what you put out, although I remain befuddled as to how that particular business model would be sustainable to either journalism and ultimately the owners and stockholders of the Atlantic.
I understand your dilemma and it really is nothing personal, I assure you, and I wish you the best of luck.
So now, for those of you remained unclear on the state of journalism in 2013, you no longer are…..
natethayer 
Stunning. I’m so glad that I’ve spent my retirement money on a masters in writing at Hopkins so that I can now make the big bucks as a freelancer.
This is amazing. The Atlantic – one of the ones I thought still paid! Sorry that happened, glad you vented, and glad you were Freshly Pressed for it!
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Subject: Comment on James Bennet’s “apology”
From: Harris Meyer (harris_meyer@yahoo.com)
To: nraabe@theatlantic.com;
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2013 2:07 PM
Please pass on to Mr. Bennet that an apology is to say “I’m sorry we did that.” When you say “I’m sorry if we offended you,” that negates the value of the apology because it suggests that you don’t really think you did anything wrong. I really didn’t have to tell you that, did I?
Harris Meyer
Freelance Writer/Editor
Covering business, politics & policy,
health care, law, wine, arts & culture.
Winner of the Gerald Loeb Award.
Based in Washington State
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Bravo for posting this discussion. Writers and journalists have to take a stand and stop this trend of working for free. Exposure is the biggest come on in the industry.
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ABSOLUTE dope move on your part. Stand your ground. Best thing I’ve read today.
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You have valid points and it’s important to discuss these things.
But you didn’t have to release the thread with the editor. You could have summarized the points just as well (actually better since we wouldn’t have to deconstruct a mail conversation).
All you accomplished in releasing the thread with a young editor is making yourself look like an arrogant bully. And that hurts the ostensible cause you’re championing.
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As someone who dreams of writing for the Atlantic this is of course terribly depressing and wrong. I was incensed enough by an unpaid summer internship I had a few years back where I was published for free.
However, did anyone else pause at “Ironically, a few years back I was offered a staff job with the Atlantic to write 6 articles a year for a retainer of $125,000, with the right to publish elsewhere in addition.”? Dear God. How much are Fallows and Goldberg pulling in? I would be really interested to hear more about why Nate decided to pass this up. If it’s because the offer passed away with Michael then this really is a tragic story about the decline of journalism coming full circle.
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I just read a local daily newspaper article detailing David Black’s (a newspaper owner) intention to build a 16 *billion* dollar oil refinery near Kitimat B.C. It’s incidents like this that take a lot of the wind out of the sails of those here who claim editors are driven to solicit free material due to dwindling sales/advert revenue. It also shows the owner’s lack of veracity when claiming they *must* lay off staff, slash employee benefits, and use offshore labor to replace the unionized local workers who demand that they receive at least a living wage in return for their work.
Yes, it’s absolutely true that print media outlets have seen their profit margins decline in recent years. But for CEOs and TV-radio pundits to blame it all on unions, Obama, or commie plotters is nothing more than another example of corporations taking advantage of the decades of anti-socialist rhetoric that Americans have been subjected to. By building on the distorted view the public has regarding communism, socialism, and even capitalism itself, the Murdochs, Blacks and Redstones of the world have been able to convince many that even our own democratic form of government is authoritarian by nature.
Why they conflate “big” government with the evils of fascism or the gulags of Stalin no matter whether it’s democratically elected or not is is explained by the simple fact that this form of government is all that stands between government “by, and for the people”, or a return to dictatorial rule.
With the demise of the monarchy and the acquisition of most of their nation’s property by the newly-emergent financial elite, came the realization by some within that elite that the only thing now standing between them and absolute power is government that is beholden to the electorate instead of them. Is it mere coincidence to see how exuberant Greenspan, the Kochs, the Murdochs, and the Tea Partiers who serve them are about Libertarianism? That it is these very same people who use their vast resources trying to convince the public that common sense regulations imposed on the industries they own are really examples of government repression ?
By removing the ability of the common man to care for himself and each other through a social safety-net, they leave us dependent on whoever fills the vacuum, and needless to say that will be whoever owns all the factories, schools, and hospitals. Because anybody else in charge would be what we call “government”.
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Gary, so true. You may find this off topic, but, I worked for a Randian once. Made his company hundreds of thousands of dollars. After a year of no vacation time, and my health insurance scratched, I wanted to go to my uncle´s funeral and take time off. I was told by said millionaire Randian boss that I should “sell a vacation” to our clients if I wanted time off: i.e., a fancy trip to south america where I would babysit spoiled adult children. Not a vacation. His economic/political philosophy served him in exploiting his workers. Not me in being “free”. I like public safety nets. They matter. I´ve lived in more than one of those so-called-socialist countries that folks like John are so afraid of, and (I´m thinking of Norway right now) I felt relief knowing that in paying taxes, I for the first time did not fear that my health would be monitored, that my children would be watched in preschool while I work, or that I could put food on the table during hard times. Hell, I was even allowed 4-6 weeks vacation, and was not seen as lazy. It is normal to rejuvenate, at least, outside America. Anyhow, what a relief to know what labor capital is and that my life blood does not have to get sucked by the top leaving me devoid of health and esteem. There is life outside of the Rand nightmare where people actually care about their neighbors´ well-being. Just because.
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Seems as if the North Koreans aren’t the only ones using slave labor these days
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As a journalist myself I fully understand Nate’s position. Having said that, Nate’s replies as to why he wouldn’t write and why his words were so valuable went over a third of the word-count of what The Atlantic wanted out of him. Writing “No thank you” would have saved a good four hundred words. It reminds me of a friend who spent twenty minutes explaining why he couldn’t help out for ten minutes! This is never the less a good read and… I didn’t have to pay for it!
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This kind of makes me slightly less regretful that I listened to my parents and didn’t pursue a career in journalism. But only slightly.
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I hit the like button because this is a good story. I don’t ‘like’ it one bit.
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Nate Thayer is my newest (if slightly angry) hero. He said loud and publicly what I’ve been living since 1992 when I started freelancing. I think he is right to be angry and insulted and unless you’ve ever had to chase after a publisher who owes you $100 or pleaded with an editor who rejected your 1,500 word story they asked you for and now won’t tell you why they killed it, you can’t begin to understand Thayer’s frustration.
I do. Best of luck, Nate.
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This blog post is so, so depressing and discouraging. So depressing.
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you should have taken that opportunity and run with it unless you are a big time journalist syndicated around the globe. writing is now about traffic to your website, all you had to do was demand that they explicitly state your signature so that their reader can be redirected to your blog.
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@Kenyanvoice Maybe you should read this writer’s bio before you say daft things like that. You may not have heard of him but not sure exposure is that essential at his stage of his career.
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Yeah the irony is I never heard of this guy until I landed here from the Atlantic’s story.
Mind you I have no interest in reading this guy’s stuff now that he’s shown himself to be a whining bully.
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I was struck by the irony of the piece being hosted for free by WordPress because of the exposure it gives them.
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Mind you, no one gives a shit that you have no interest in reading this guy’s stuff. Or that you think he’s shown himself to be “a whining bully.”
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I completely sympathize with your plight, and as a future journalist I sincerely hope that issues like this are soon resolved, for the sake of the profession. However, I cannot help but wonder: how can a journalist who publishes emails with sentences such as “I remain befuddled as to how that particular business model would be sustainable to EITHER journalism AND ultimately the owners and stockholders of the Atlantic”, which makes no sense grammatically, or misspells “willing” be offered a paying job of $125,000? Published on blog, with chance for revision, I can’t help but cringe at lazy errors that pertain to your livelihood. I would hope that the article you wrote on NK was more polished than your blog, otherwise the Atlantic and other outlets could call you out on lack of flourish. Alas, as a student, these are only my two cents.
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