Korean Sex, the Atlantic magazine, and Ted Koppel: What visitors wanted to read in 2013

My 2013 statistics for my blog, natethayer.wordpress.com, have been summarized and broken down. They provide for interesting, sometimes disturbing, sometimes humorous, sometimes enlightening,and to me, fascinating insight into how and why people decide to visit an online site, via what social media networks, from where the readers live, and what topics interest them.

508,000 readers came from 215 countries to read 134 stories published in 2013. The top two stories did not, importantly, involve the area of my professional focus–North Korea and Cambodia– but rather were stories regarding the malfeasance of the corporate media world. They were A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013 with 269,765 visitors and How Ted Koppel and ABC TV Tried to Steal my Life Work with 100,123 visitors.

Readers came via scores of referrer sites, but were dominated by Facebook with 92,000, Twitter 74,962, Search Engines 46,786, Reddit 30,368, theatlantic.com 14,228, Hacker News 6,285, and gawker.com 4,231, among many others.

I consider my blog, through a willful act of self delusion, not to be really publishing my professional work but more as a digital personal diary which I share with whoever has an interest. It is rife with grammatical, spelling, design, and other errors.

I do not promote it, save for it automatically links to twitter, my public Facebook page, and LinkedIn. Often, I will post the material on my personal Facebook page, as well.

I do not advertise nor have I tried to make money off of it, although,as of last week, I have now begun to, since it takes up a considerable amount of my professional time. Recently, I had a friend, my tech Guru, put a Paypal button on the site for those interested in supporting my writing.

In 2013, I had 508,000 + people come read my blog. There were 86 new posts, growing the total archive to 134 posts. This is an average of about 1 and ½ stories a week. And there were 580 pictures uploaded–about 2 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was March 5th with 131,748 views. The most popular post that day was A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013.

Below, for those interested in the mechanics of how readers arrive where on the internet, is a detailed view of what stories were popular, which online sites drive the most traffick, where people who read these sort of stories live, and what search engine terms are used to land people on sites such as mine.

These are the most popular posts of the year. Note that not a single one includes a story that is related to my primary professional focus of North Korea or Cambodia.

• 1 A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013 820 comments March 2013
• 2 How Ted Koppel and ABC TV Tried to Steal my Life Work 56 comments December 2013
• 3 The Atlantic feels the heat from journalism for no pay business model: “Our Freelance Rates Vary” says Editor James Bennet 34 comments March 2013
• 4 Teenage Daughter of Google Chief Spills The True Story on North Korea Visit: Puts to Shame Free Press, Dad, and U.S. Government 8 comments January 2013
• 5 Happy Chinese New Year in Cambodia: Corrupt Govt Officials Hand Cash to Hundreds of Soldiers 2 comments February 2013

What drove people to read the blog? The top referring sites in 2013 were:
1. twitter.com
2. facebook.com
3. theatlantic.com
4. news.ycombinator.com
5. gawker.com

And then there were search engines. The top terms that people punched in that resulted in them landing on my blog were:
“choeung sopheap”, sophie schmidt google, nate thayer, korean sex, and westboro baptist church phone number.
Here is the complete list of the top stories read in 2013 on my blog, and how many readers visted each story. Note that my area of professional expertise holds relatively little interest for most of my readership:
The top stories viewed this year by rank:
Top Posts for 365 days ending 2014-01-02 from 2013-01-02

Title Views
A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013
269,765
How Ted Koppel and ABC TV Tried to Steal my Life Work
100,123
Home page / Archives
59,944
The Atlantic feels the heat from journalism for no pay business model: “Our Freelance Rates Vary” says Editor James Bennet
6,379
About Nate Thayer
5,539
Teenage Daughter of Google Chief Spills The True Story on North Korea Visit: Puts to Shame Free Press, Dad, and U.S. Government
5,404
Happy Chinese New Year in Cambodia: Corrupt Govt Officials Hand Cash to Hundreds of Soldiers
4,356
Thoughts on the Death of Mass Murderer Ieng Sary:Cambodian Political Culture and North Korea
2,664
BREAKING NEWS: Dark Hand of British Royal Family behind Secret Murder of Kate’s Morning Sickness Nurse
2,216
Nate Thayer–Awards and Honors
2,013
Google Chief’s Teenage Daughter Blog Puts AP North Korea News Bureau to Shame: A Comparative Analysis
1,997
Robot Sex Poll Reveals How I Got Invited–Then Uninvited–As Guest on Huffington Post Live TV Show
1,740
25 Years of Slam Dunk Diplomacy: Rodman trip and history of U.S.-North Korean basketball diplomacy
1,649
Oops….Sorry About that Austin, Texas
1,413
Frequent Flyer’s Guide to North Korean Air: a Review of World’s Only One Star Airline
1,371
ABC News and Ted Koppel owe an apology for soiling the integrity of freelancers and the institution of journalism
1,314
The Plague of Online Plagiarism: A Case Study of the Anatomy of Journalistic Theft from my Facebook Page
1,253
The Night Pol Pot Died: Excerpts from unpublished manuscript “SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL: A JOURNALIST’S MEMOIR INSIDE POL POT’S KHMER ROUGE” By Nate Thayer
1,149
Corporate Power, ABC TV and Ted Koppel tried to censor the free speech of a free man in a free country. Fuck that.
1,025
What do Kim Il Sung, Hun Sen Have In Common with Animal Pets? They All Obtained Bogus College Degrees
999
Selected Reviews and Commentary on the Journalism of Nate Thayer
969
Unpaid Newspaper Blogger Says Enough: New No Pay Contract Now Demands All Rights to Photos, Writing Forever
943
Pot Pot Tells China in 1977 that Killings Underway, to Continue
942
Susan Brownmiller and Why I am a Journalist
891
Obama: Support Cambodian Human Rights, Democratic Freedoms, and Those Resisting the Last Murderous Thug Left Standing in South East Asia
886
My Friend, Arthur: Formerly the Planet’s Biggest Dope Trafficker
828
(unknown or deleted)
684
Rape, Child Abuse, and Animal Cruelty: Women’s Sexual Freedom and Respecting My Pal Lamont
681
What Happened to the Khmer Rouge? They are Back in Power. Excerpts from “Sympathy for the Devil: Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge”
672
How to Live and Die With Meaning: The Final Hours of my Friend Buddy, Yesterday
649
Hun Sen and his cabal are murderous, corrupt thugs: No One Disputes that. Obama Should Take a Stand for the Human and Political Rights of Cambodians
640
Westboro Baptist Church Pickets Newton School Funerals: Say Kids Deserved to Die Because America Loves “Fags”
618
Reuters Story on Google Head Visit to Pyongyang Datelined Seoul Devastates AP report from North Korea Bureau
588
One Israeli assassin, a North Korean train explosion, dead Syrian scientists, fake Canadian passports, Dubai and New Zealand arrest warrants, and a poisoned Hamas guerrilla
528
What Did Che Guevera and Kim Il Sung Have in Common? They were both Racist Bigots
504
Boston Massacre: April is the Holy Week for Homegrown U.S. Terrorist Movement
478
The check is rarely in the mail: The dark side of freelance journalists trying to get paid for their work
470
A letter to a young Cambodian-2013: Reflections on a toxic political culture
464
Social Media Frightens Me: The Thoughtful Confessions of a Confirmed Skeptic
456
Dying Breath: The inside story of Pol Pot’s last days and the disintegration of the movement he created
448
Somalia Pirates Hijack North Korean Ship, Then Decide it Isn’t Worth it and Turn Themselves In
411
Love and Sex in the U.S. Foreign Service -Lust, Bombs, Bureaucrats. Writings by James Bruno
371
(unknown or deleted)
362
Sleep With the Angels, Buddy: Photographing the Death of My Friend
352
White Power and Apocalyptic Cults: Pro-DPRK homegrown U.S. terrorist groups are Pyongyang chosen favorites
351
Pyongyang Porn: “Some readers may find the book objectionable” @NKNewsorg
349
Goodbye, my Friend, Buddy. Thank You for Making Me a Better Man
348
“The ethics of not paying writers in exchange for ‘exposure’: A debate #paythewriter
344
I’m leaving, on a jet plane–Edward’s excellent spy adventure
342
Lunching With Mass Murderers: Khmer Rouge leaders explain why they slaughtered their own people, and why it was, really, for the best: Excerpts from “Sympathy for the Devil” By Nate Thayer
337
Musician’s Protest Goes Viral: Corporations offer no payment in exchange for “exposure”
322
North Korean Tourism Dwarfed by Visitors to Elvis,South Korea For Nose Jobs, Thai Sex Change Operations
321
‘See Angkor and die’
304
The Death of Credible Media in the Internet Age: Media More Dead Than Non Existent GF of Sports Celebrity
302
(unknown or deleted)
301
The Night I Lived: Landmines, war and journalism: Excerpts from Sympathy for the Devil
298
A Peak In the Public Mailbox: Debate on state of journalism runs from supportive to, well, very not–with a dash of the amusing and odd.
294
Global Trail of Dead Scientists Price of Illicit Pyongyang-Syria Weapons Collaboration
294
Has the news biz come to this? Freelance journalists required to sign document forbidding writing anything negative about employers or advertisers?
294
Pol Pot Meets Kim Il Sung
286
Memories of a Good and Great Man: Father Pierre Ceyrac
275
Lunching with Mass Murderers: The Khmer Rouge Were Not Communists; They were Cambodians
275
Canadian Sex Advice Columnist Weighs in on Atlantic Kerfuffle Over Pay the Writer
261
French actor Depardieu Moves to Russian Mordovia Where Punk Band Pussy Riot Rots in Jail: Complains in France “anything different must be sanctioned.”
260
Oops. That Hits a Bit Close to Home: Second Thoughts on North Korean Propaganda
241
Google search terms which drove readers to my blog: Alert Homeland Security or throw a block party?
238
Corruption: American Style. U.S. foreign policy leadership for sale to those who give the most cash
235
An Invitation to the Khmer Rouge Controlled Jungles: A travel Itinerary to the World’s Most Clandestine Guerrilla Army
225
How White Are You? And What The Heck is a “Cornball Brother”?: Important Questions in Sports Journalism
217
Unredacted Manifesto of America’s Most Wanted Fugitive: Ex LA Cop Details Why He is on Killing Spree
213
I AM HAZARA TAKING BlOOD BATH IN QUETTA
175
ESCAPES: The Living Fields; Cambodia’s Most Famous War Reporter Retreats to Dorchester County, Md.
161
For Pyongyang, Global Digital Revolution for Foreign Eyes Only:You Tube Bans North Korean Video
159
To my friend, Buddy
157
The Spy Sub, A Poisoned Diplomat in Russia, and a Naked, Drunk American Preacher in Pyongyang
152
(unknown or deleted)
150
Vietnam Era Renegade Army Discovered: Lighting the darkness: FULRO’s jungle Christians
145
Spies and Journalists: Excerpts From Sympathy for the Devil by Nate Thayer
141
Working Third Shift In A Hotel: My Life as a Pimp and Dope Dealer
138
North Korea’s Hall of Mirrors: Fake Global Network of Shell Companies Key to Illicit Arms Exports
138
Why I am a Journalist: Continued….From a Daughter in Exile From her Own History
136
Freelance Investigative Journalist Who is Convinced Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington are Satan
124
“I am scared that tonight I will die” A reporters diary from Baghdad @Nate_Thayer
123
Full Resources of the U.S. Military Tracking Santa Claus: Nuclear and Missile Defence Systems Distracted
121
Fleeting Thoughts on the Death of Human Interaction in the Digital Age
120
Mississippi Elvis Impersonator Terrorist Suspect Claims U.S. Coverup After Finding Body Parts in Refrigerator
113
(unknown or deleted)
112
Golf, Cambodia, and the ‘very cornerstone of morality’
111
How to Make Two Little Old Ladies Happy: A Thanksgiving Story
102
GRATITUDE: Thoughts on being born free
99
Syria’s Chemical Weapons: The North Korean Connection
98
North Korea Falls for Internet Hoax Kim Jong Un named Time Magazine ‘Man of the Year’
95
Black Government Helicopters Zoom Low Over Washington D.C. to Protect Against Terrorist Dirty Nuclear Bomb
94
Mississippi Elvis Cum Terrorist Impersonator Leaves Trail of Social Media Clues
94
“Who is that singer? Johnny Jackson? Like he says, ‘We are the World!’ We are with the West! Let’s join together!” said a Khmer Rouge cadre
92
How Hordes of U.S. Republican Party Apparatchik’s Toppled the Mongolian Communist Descendants of Genghis Khan
91
News headline of the day: Dog owner’s dispute research women more attracted to men with guitars
90
Has Kim Jong Un Had Plastic Surgery? China Says: No Comment: Pyongyang erupts following reports circulating in Chinese media
86
North Korea Erupts at “sordid hackwork by rubbish media”: Vows a “dear price the human scum and media”will “have to pay”
84
Journalist of Mercy: Walt Whitman Remembered
76
The Childhood Education of a Cantankerous Journalist
75
Iraq Between the American ‘Shock and Awe” Assault and Capture of Baghdad
65
U.S. Embassy Bhenghazi Attacked by Mob, Set on Fire–in 1967
64
(unknown or deleted)
64
North Korea Announces 2013 Slogan is “building of an economic giant” as “Space Conquerors”
63
Why Gen. Petreaus Fucking Whomever is Really not my Business
57
North Korean Rocket Launch to Test Capability to Reach U.S. imminent in Coming Days
56
Syrian Chemical Weapons: The odd tale of a lone Israeli spy and North Korea
56
AP Exclusive: U.S. News Agency Sells Reputation to North Korea for Access to Exactly No News
54
Cambodian Border Massacre: American Crosses the Line to Save Lives
54
Thayer Targeted by Dangerous, Volatile Social Media Campaign in Case of Mistaken Identity
51
All eyes on U.S. prisoner during Dennis Rodman return visit to N. Korea
51
North Korean Officials Implicated in Scores of Drug Trafficking Incidents
43
Washington tells bar owner to rename cocktail or face justice
41
The violent consequences of the North Korea-Syria chemical arms trade
39
Websites Hacked of Cambodian Secret Political Police and Supreme Court Charged with both Protecting the Assassins of Political Opponents and Jailing Opposition
37
An Airplane From New York to Tokyo With a Pit Stop In Heaven
36
Out of 7,000 Internet Readers of This Blog Today, Exactly Zero Came From North Korea and Precisely One From China
33
Artist with “Strange Watch” Charged with “Possessing an Explosive Device” at U.S. Airport: Cite “watch itself was on incorrect time.”
33
North Korea Launched Missive Against Foreign media ‘Rat-Like Imbeciles’
32
Mr. X, the Cop, and the Heng Samrin: Why being a Journalist is the Best Job on Earth
30
Dennis Rodman steals ball from U.S. govt as N Korea cancels U.S. mission to free prisoner on eve of Rodman visit
30
America’s Embarrassing Dirty Little Secret: The Loopy Conspiracy Theorists Live Next Door
29
Excerpts from my unpublished book “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalists Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge”
28
New Edition Of ‘Bible Of Psychiatry’ Combines Witch Doctor Hocus Pocus With Boneheaded, Unsupported Diseases in the Service of For-Profit Dope Dealers Industry
27
“Capitalism Has No Future” North Korea Announces: “It is a matter of time for Capitalism to disappear from history.”
27
The Night Pol Pot Died-Excerpts from “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge”
26
Cambodia: Asia’s New Narco-State? Medellin on the Mekong
23
Chinese Official People’s Daily Reports as Serious the Onion’s Spoof Naming Kim Jong Un ‘Sexiest Man Alive’
22
Travels With Vice President LBJ: “Son, if you do this again, I am going to poison your soup.”
20
Analysis of What Topics Interest Readers of My Blog Alarming: Sex, British Royal Murder Plot, CIA Mistress Outperform North Korea, Cambodia, Pol Pot, Journalism
20
All of Kim Jong-un’s men
19
North Korea: The World’s Only Mafia Crime State
18
POL POT: THE END Far Eastern Economic Review
17
Evidence Suggests Readers of Thayer Blog are Certifiably Bonkers
15
‘We are the World!’ Excerpts from “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge”
9
Thai Border: A Wild West of Anarchy
8
North Korea: A Criminal Syndicate Posing as a Government
7
Tycoon Says He Financed Hun Sen Coup
4
North Korea IDs Mystery Woman as Kim Jong-Un’s Wife—But Who Is She, Really?
4
As Sappy an Appreciation of Thanksgiving That Will Ever be Offered from a Grateful if a Bit Loopy American Citizen
4
Drug Suspects Bankroll Cambodian Coup Leader
4
THE CAMBODIAN CONUNDRUM
1
Arrest for Insufficient Mourning at Funeral of Kim Jong Il? Unlikely Media Hype

Among the other notable search terms that somehow had visitors land on my blog included the following. Note the dominance of the theme of sex in search terms. Note also that I have essentially never written about North Korean sex because I essentially know nothing about North Korean sex:
korean sex
freelance journalist
nate thayer blog
koreansex
north korean porn
nate thayer atlantic
korean porn
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korean sex.com
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susan brownmiller thayer
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nate thayer the atlantic
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korean tube
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http://www.korean sex.com
korian sex
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google northkoreafreesex
a day in the life of a writer
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the atlantic freelance journalist
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animal child sex
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nate is the best at getting paul internet, enjoy!!!
korea.porn
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http://www.north korea sex.com
prison+clothing
british monarchy secrets
korea@sex..com
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“has anyone ever let a male dog fuck them?”
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www sex khmer.google search
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http://www.korea sex.com

fucking hun sen pictures
dog rape women
british royal family murderers
modern day cornball brother
sexkhmer
the dark side of the british monarchy

Visitors came from 215 countries.

Below are the entire statistical details for the year 2013, including the precise number of visitors who arrived via which social media sites:
2013-01-01 to 2014-01-01:

Referrer Views
Facebook
92,000
Twitter 74,962
Search Engines 46,786
Reddit 30,368
theatlantic.com 14,228
Hacker News 6,285
gawker.com 4,231
nymag.com 2,531
Google Reader
1,803
metafilter.com 1,780
aljazeera.com 1,749
bildblog.de 1,573
petapixel.com 1,533
aphotoeditor.com 1,501
slate.com 1,286
jimromenesko.com 1,222
thebrowser.com 1,221
observer.com/2013/04/nate-thayer-disinvited-from-huffpo-tv-appearance/
1,098
parislemon.com 1,068
washingtonpost.com 925
pandodaily.com 915
makingitlovely.com 907
sportsshooter.com 889
hootsuite.com 840
mail.yahoo.com
840
poynter.org 836
blogs.reuters.com 819
jeremyduns.blogspot.se 757
nytimes.com 733
dish.andrewsullivan.com 662
wonkette.com 628
WordPress.com Reader
605
freekorea.us 585
tumblr.com 578
buzzfeed.com 578
guardian.co.uk 568
khmer440.com 538
mediabistro.com 536
theothermccain.com 534
rue89.com/rue89-sport/2013/03/06/rodman-en-coree-du-nord-une-belle-histoire-damitie-de-basket-et-de-dollars
501
grantland.com 492
glpiggy.net 445
whatever.scalzi.com 431
muckrack.com 390
cjr.org 386
ritholtz.com 358
sportsjournalists.com 353
mediagazer.com 346
linkedin.com 337
slog.thestranger.com 334
Google+
324
233grados.lainformacion.com 310
bits.blogs.nytimes.com 281
ilyabirman.ru 275
whopays.tumblr.com 273
loopinsight.com 265
blog.gawker.com 263
gothamist.com/2013/03/05/early_addition_1218.php
263
freelancewrite.about.com 262
WordPress Dashboard
257
virginiasolesmith.com 252
superpunch.net 247
techcrunch.com 241
driftglass.blogspot.com 240
iconfactory.com 237
ericgarland.co 235
phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/09/ive-got-your-missing-links-right-here-9-march-2013/
228
mail.live.com
220
mobile.slate.com 218
tcj.com 201
wnyc.org 200
meedia.de/internet/journalismus-als-gratis-dienstleistung/2013/03/07.html
193
thebiglead.com 182
nubbytwiglet.com 177
ilxor.com 177
Pocket
171
prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/journalism-freelance-nate-thayer/
167
paidcontent.org 160
en.wordpress.com 158
theamericanconservative.com 157
naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=229823
152
washingtonmonthly.com 152
janefriedman.com/2013/03/05/online-journalism/
149
disqus.com 139
neogaf.com 132
trustmeimascientist.com 131
jasonfry.tumblr.com 129
bostonsportsmedia.com 128
lhote.blogspot.com 122
blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2013/03/07/survive-freelance-writer-2013/
119
mikethemadbiologist.com 117
counterparties.com 116
themillions.com 115
freelancesuccess.com 110
itsnicethat.com/articles/weekender-yeah
110
pulse.me
106
overland.org.au 105
espn.go.com/boxing/
103
moviecitynews.com 102
theroot.com 102
rarewire.com
101
vice.com 99
geteducated.com 98
thepassivevoice.com 96
politico.com 96
npr.org 94
jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/16241-race-to-the-bottom-continues/
94
tickerforum.org 90
api.gawker.com 89
pw.org/content/literature_and_burlesque_state_of_freelance_writing_and_more
89
gigaom.com/2013/03/06/doing-that-one-thing/
88
nationalnewswatch.com 85
hckrnews.com
84
b-roll.net 82
ravelry.com/discuss/designers/2497624/1-25
81
instapaper.com 81
georgakopoulos.org 79
readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/16363-focus-frank-rich-rand-pauls-performance-art-
79
storify.com 77
therumpus.net 76
denieuwereporter.nl 76
blogs.payscale.com 74
electricalaudio.com 74
withjokes.com 73
hahien.wordpress.com 72
forumopolis.com 69
niemanlab.org 69
blogs.discovermagazine.com 66
jeremyduns.blogspot.com 64
readability.com 63
bluegraysky.com 63
utsandiego.com 62
Netvibes
62
mashable.com/2013/07/08/harpers-magazine-digital-revolution/
61
brw.com.au 60
edcone.typepad.com 58
dankennedy.net 58
botd.wordpress.com/top-posts/
58
touch.wonkette.com/wonkette/
57
np.reddit.com 57
google.de 57
discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/1640-copyright-thievesgive-em-more-of-this/
56
hyperallergic.com 56
olimannahatta.wordpress.com 56
blog.davidchartier.com 56
diannej.com 55
patthorntonfiles.com 54
irishtimes.com 54
rjkoehler.com/2013/01/23/sophie-schmidts-take-on-north-korea/
53
blog.priceonomics.com 53
oneman.gr/keimena/diaskedash/watchlist/the-weekend-list.2158955.html
53
eenk.com 53
ojr.org 52
thatsoundscool.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/fumbling-for-the-truth-the-freelancing-author-or-will-i-ever-be-paid-again/
52
modelmayhem.com 52
weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/
51
americanpowerblog.blogspot.com 51
flickfilosopher.com 50
mediaite.com/online/the-atlantic-takes-heat-for-offering-not-to-pay-a-journalist/
50
mrjam.org 49
planbnation.net 49
popurls.com
48
memeorandum.com 48
pbs.org 48
us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=faa8eb4ef3a111cef92c4f3d4&id=5dbaa99114
48
ilaba.wordpress.com 47
Google 47
d2.guardian.co.uk/discussion/p/3ep65?commentpage=1&orderby=oldest&per_page=50&iframe=true&noposting=true
44
forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/03/06/whining-about-unpaid-writing-gigs-isnt-going-to-increase-writers-incomes/
44
thenation.com/blog/173360/veronica-mars-amanda-palmer-atlantic-and-depressing-economics-cultural-production-oh-my
44
erikadreifus.com 43
daily-download.com/nate-thayer-the-atlantic-freelancer-work-for-free-dilemma/
43
npac.ca 43
rokdrop.com/2013/01/20/rok-drop-open-thread-january-20-2013/
42
forum.rpg.net 42
dvafoto.com 41
theclick.us 41
blog.photoshelter.com/2013/03/would-you-work-for-free/
41
quora.com 40
digiday.com 40
martinbelam.com 39
d-word.com 39
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wahm.com/forum/writing-freelancing-46/688235-more-same-amount-money.html
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charlesmccaul.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/what-happened-to-the-khmer-rouge/
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the-digital-reader.com 17
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thestage.co.uk/columns/shenton/2013/03/journalisms-last-stand/
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16
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blogtown.portlandmercury.com/blogs/BlogtownPDX/
16
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16
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16
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15
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15
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15
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thephotosociety.org/blog/working-for-free/
15
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14
blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2013/03/06/why-magazines-should-pay-their-writers-or-die-trying/
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nationalreview.com/tweet
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passeurdesciences.blog.lemonde.fr 14
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prexus.yuku.com/topic/24757/How-Ted-Koppel-and-ABC-TV-Tried-to-Steal-my-Life-Work
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mobile.theroot.com/blogs/journalisms/2013/03/17/tanehisi_coates_where_was_solidarity_with_black_freelancers.html
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bymorgancampbell.com/2013/03/05/nate-thayer-and-the-shame-of-page-view-journalism/
13
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popsci.com/technology/article/2013-03/ways-to-make-journalism-suck-less
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tmtpost.com/21010.html
9
theoldreader.com/posts/all
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StumbleUpon 9
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theconversation.com/can-news-on-a-shoestring-be-a-good-story-15447?utm_term=Can+News+on+a+shoestring+be+a+good+story
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google.com.kh/blank.html
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writerunderground.com 9
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blogos.com/article/57627/
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9
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9
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9
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9
ithenticate.com/plagiarism-detection-blog/bid/91995/Nate-Thayer-and-the-Nature-of-Freelance-Plagiarism
9
blog.muckrack.com/post/44998379608/muckedup-chat-tuesday-money-journalism
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fr.reddit.com 8
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kimletkeman.blogspot.com/2013/03/harlan-ellison-pay-writer.html
8
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altweeklies.com/aan/media-oxpecker-splitting-the-pie-with-digital-dimes/Article?oid=6960001
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freelanceadvisor.co.uk/weekly-digest/freelancers-weekly-digest-12/
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blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/18/an_exit_interview_with_aps_first_north_korea_bureau_chief
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formiche.net/2013/09/05/armi-chimiche-pyongyang-nord-corea-siria-damasco/
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thaivisa.com/forum/topic/681803-the-night-i-lived-landmines-war-and-journalism-excerpts-from-sympathy-for-the-devil/
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manyfesto.net
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mypostingcareer.com/forums/shoutbox/
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jeremyduns.net/2013/03/07/nate-thayer-is-a-plagiarist/
7
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7
ynpntwincities.org/blog/2013/4/19/when-people-work-for-little-who-pays-or-what-nonprofit-emplo.html
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live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/freelancer-worries-new-economy/5137630b78c90a6cdb0002f8
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jamiechavez.com/blog/permalink/2013/03/giving-credit-where-its-due/
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nextlevelofnews.com/2013/03/exposure-instead-of-payment-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-by-nate_thayer.html
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7
phillymag.com/news/2013/03/07/survive-freelance-writer-2013/
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miamiherald.com/2013/03/24/3301364/who-pays-unpaid-writers-bills.html?goback=.gde_75711_member_226182672
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rippdemup.com/2013/04/writing-for-exposure-freelancing-aint-free/
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oquehaparadizer.blogspot.pt/2013/03/a-day-in-life-of-freelance-journalist.html
6
boardgamegeek.com/thread/953945/see-you-guys-later-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish
6
therenegadewriter.com/2013/03/25/if-you-love-writing-should-you-still-get-paid-for-it/
6
emilysenger.ca/uncategorized/more-on-the-future-of-journalism-going-digital-and-freelance/
6
reflectionandchoice.org/2013/10/28/muzzling-the-ox-writers-dont-get-paid/
6
jensweinreich.de/2010/07/07/online-gebuhren-ii-uber-den-wert-von-qualitatsjournalismus/
6
jeremyduns.blogspot.ca/2013/03/nate-thayer-is-plagiarist.html
6
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atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NL20Dg01.html
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gphuffman.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/some-die-of-exposure/
5
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prweek.tumblr.com/post/44732206028/atlantic-staff-journalists-write-most-of-the
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5
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journalismlab.nl/2013/03/moeten-journalisten-voor-niks-werken/
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kimletkeman.blogspot.ca/2013/03/harlan-ellison-pay-writer.html

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natethayer.wordpress.com+a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013 28
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en zain, a malaysian resident, is a freelance writer of articles and author of several books. in 2008, he translated a literary work at the specific request of the ministry of education. his income from royalties and expenditure for the year ended 31 december 2008 are as follows 3
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en zain, a malaysian resident, is a freelance writer of articles and author of several books. in 2008, he translated a literary work at the specific request of the ministry of education. his income from royalties and expenditure for the year ended 31 december 2008 are as follows: compute the statutory income from royalties of en zain for the year of assessment 2008.: 3
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en zain, a malaysian resident, is a freelance writer of articles and author of several books. in 2008, he translated a literary work at the specific request of the ministry of education. his income from royalties and expenditure for the year ended 31 december 2008 are as follows: 3
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20,014

 

These are the visitors who read my blog from each country, with a breakdown of how many from where:

Country Views
United States 293,728
United Kingdom 37,210
Canada 35,054
Australia 19,355
Germany 10,975
France 6,974
Cambodia 6,852
India 4,865
Netherlands 4,573
Ireland 3,817
Spain 3,432
Thailand 3,323
Sweden 3,145
Singapore 2,865
Republic of Korea 2,850
Brazil 2,634
New Zealand 2,580
Japan 2,480
Italy 2,328
Hong Kong 2,299
Finland 2,197
Philippines 2,134
Switzerland 1,949
Belgium 1,782
Viet Nam 1,758
Israel 1,719
Denmark 1,688
Norway 1,645
Malaysia 1,450
South Africa 1,446
Indonesia 1,375
Mexico 1,312
Russian Federation 1,235
Austria 1,161
Poland 1,042
Turkey 1,012
Portugal 899
Greece 873
Romania 827
United Arab Emirates 788
Hungary 637
Czech Republic 624
Bulgaria 548
Argentina 539
Taiwan 523
Pakistan 520
Egypt 514
Slovenia 497
Ukraine 481
Kenya 395
Lebanon 375
Serbia 354
Chile 312
Qatar 299
Colombia 286
Croatia 266
Myanmar 258
Saudi Arabia 246
Peru 215
Bangladesh 193
Nigeria 188
Sri Lanka 182
Uganda 182
Estonia 167
Puerto Rico 161
Iceland 160
Slovakia 158
Jordan 155
Morocco 144
Lithuania 141
Costa Rica 141
Nepal 137
Latvia 137
Luxembourg 135
Ghana 134
Iraq 119
Ecuador 118
Cyprus 116
Bosnia and Herzegovina 116
Lao People’s Democratic Republic 112
Afghanistan 111
Venezuela 111
Malta 106
Kuwait 104
Guatemala 91
Palestinian Territory, Occupied 89
Mongolia 79
Panama 79
Dominican Republic 78
Trinidad and Tobago 75
Barbados 75
Tunisia 73
Jamaica 73
Yemen 71
Belarus 68
Albania 67
Georgia 66
Bahrain 59
Bhutan 58
Uruguay 57
Senegal 54
United Republic of Tanzania 53
Zimbabwe 53
Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic 52
Bahamas 52
Côte d’Ivoire 50
Macao 48
Honduras 45
Oman 45
Fiji 43
Haiti 41
Nicaragua 40
Brunei Darussalam 38
Malawi 38
Mali 36
Algeria 35
Libya 34
Ethiopia 34
Zambia 31
El Salvador 31
Guam 31
Moldova 31
Isle of Man 31
Jersey 30
Bermuda 30
Azerbaijan 30
Armenia 29
Kazakhstan 28
Mozambique 28
Mauritius 28
Rwanda 27
Cayman Islands 27
China 25
Belize 25
Bolivia 24
Namibia 23
Liberia 23
Maldives 21
Virgin Islands 21
Cook Islands 21
Tajikistan 20
Cameroon 20
Kyrgyzstan 19
Sierra Leone 18
Paraguay 17
Benin 16
Antigua and Barbuda 16
Réunion 14
Burkina Faso 14
Democratic Republic of the Congo 14
Guernsey 14
Djibouti 14
Montenegro 13
Syrian Arab Republic 13
Botswana 12
Grenada 12
Monaco 12
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 11
Sudan 10
Angola 10
Somalia 9
Turks and Caicos Islands 9
Guyana 9
Uzbekistan 8
Gibraltar 8
Cuba 8
Timor-Leste 8
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 8
Aruba 8
Suriname 7
Papua New Guinea 7
Martinique 7
Lesotho 6
British Virgin Islands 6
Gambia 6
Åland Islands 6
Andorra 5
Northern Mariana Islands 5
Madagascar 5
New Caledonia 5
Guadeloupe 4
French Polynesia 4
Saint Lucia 4
Dominica 4
Greenland 4
Niger 4
Faroe Islands 4
Vatican City 4
Togo 3
Swaziland 3
American Samoa 3
Saint Kitts and Nevis 3
Anguilla 2
Gabon 2
French Guiana 2
Seychelles 2
Vanuatu 2
Cape Verde 2
Falkland Islands (Malvinas) 2
Mauritania 2
Solomon Islands 2
Congo 2
Liechtenstein 1
Iran, Islamic Republic of 1
Guinea 1
Micronesia, Federated States of 1
Palau 1
Tonga 1
Samoa 1
Sao Tome and Principe 1

ABC News and Ted Koppel owe an apology for soiling the integrity of freelancers and the institution of journalism

Mr. Koppel, you owe an apology to the institution of journalism for soiling its integrity.

By Nate Thayer

December 12, 2013

Well, Mr. Ted Koppel, I, for one, would like to hear your response to my contention you pimped your reputation for integrity to ABC News/Disney Corporation in order to steal the life work of a freelance journalist. And then accepted a Peabody award for, well for doing exactly what, really?

This week has been a tad distracting, but I very much appreciate the overwhelmingly positive and supportive commentary from colleagues from around the globe over my objection to Ted Koppel and Nightline and ABC News, owned by the Disney Corporation, stealing my photographs, video, and exclusive eyewitness reports of Pol Pot, the cumulative result of more than a decade of my journalistic efforts, and ABC’s egregious violation of basic journalistic ethics and integrity by trying to take credit for that work, despite not having a single ABC employee assigned to all of South east Asia.

ABC TV stolen still pictures, in which they place four separate credits claiming this picture was taken by them and they had rights to distribute it. Note that, despite there not being an employee of ABC news located in Southeast Asia at the time, there is no credit to the photographer of the picture

Every freelance journalist on earth has faced untold numbers of similar experiences, but the cost of fighting back these huge media corporations makes most every case of this common practice almost impossible to fight back.

At least, in the case of the Pol Pot story and video and still images, the story was worth enough that lawyers, not my favorite category of people to spend my leisure time schmoozing with, were willing to take on my case.

It was not because they were outraged at the ethical and moral stench that this high-profile example of the routine treatment of freelance journalists by media behemoths represented.

It was because they knew they would make enough money to increase their tax bracket.

This allowed me to be able to fight back and win.

But, after 7 years of the most unpleasant life sucking process, after it became clear to ABC I would never be intimidated and never back down in the face of their behemoth corporate machinery, ABC demanded I sign a document saying I could never mention the issue again in public if they agreed to pay me for their clear-cut, intentional calculated theft and plagiarism of my copyrighted work.

Another ABC frame grab of my still pictures, taken after 15 years of work, which they distributed to the planet and took credit for

I signed the document. I am now intentionally and without a scintilla of reservation or remorse violating that agreement. Because it an insult to the very fundamental premise of free speech and concept of a free press.

To demand that a journalist–that would be me– be forced to muzzle his right to free speech in order that another so-called icon of journalistic integrity compensate me for outright theft, after a very nasty, prolonged 7 year effort of blackmail, corporate intimidation, threats, bullying, and a bald attempt at bankrupting me, while Ted Koppel remained (and remains silent) shilling for his corporate pimps, was too much for me to stomach.

Koppel flew to Bangkok, signed a written legal contract promising to use the video for “Seven days North American rights only for video use only for Nightline only”, and then said to me: “You are going to have to trust me journalist to journalist” and looked me in the eye and shook my hand. That used to be the way journalists on deadlines dealt with each other. One had to trust another man’s word.

There was no time, and thank God, place for lawyers when a story needed to be written and produced and edited and researched and published on a very short tight deadline.

My still photograph, which became worthless on the international market after ABC TV America stole my pictures and tried to take credit for 15 years of my life work

Ted Koppel then refused to talk to me for nine months. “My ABC lawyers have told me I can’t talk to you, ” is one direct quote, shortly after he got a hold of a copy of my video tape, which was transferred based on his personal word of honor and I accepted based on his reputation for integrity.

Ted Koppel had a price he was willing to sell his reputation for integrity, and by extension the integrity of the institution of journalism. That price was the instructions of his ABC/ Disney corporate bosses.

Then the ABC PR machine got a bit a head of themselves. They have an entire department devoted to applying for nothing but awards. And they made the mistake of applying for a Peabody award for their use of my stolen, copyrighted work, under my name, as a “correspondent for ABC Nightline.”

When I won, nine months after they stole my work, they had refused to pay me a penny until I signed a document saying they had done nothing wrong, I informed them I was scheduled to be in New York–ironically to accept another award for the annual “Courage in Journalism” given to the journalist who had “exhibited the most moral and physical courage in practicing his craft” that year.

I told Koppel I planned to attend the Peabody ceremony and, on stage, formally refuse the ward because “I in n o way wanted my name associated with egregious violation of journalistic ethics and integrity” that ABC television and Nightline had exhibited. My written invitation to the ceremony was rescinded by ABC and the Peabody awards and I was escorted from the Waldorf Astoria banquet hall by security guards, despite having not only been in a possession of a physical ticket but a recipient of one of the awards given that day.

I want to add here that I believe Koppel is indeed a man of integrity. He was one of the very best that American television had to offer. Which, in itself, is not saying much.

So, I signed the document where i promised to never speak a word disparaging of ABC on the matter, took the money they owed me, which virtually all went to lawyers and taxes, and am now saying “Fuck you ABC!”

You did what you did.

No one will ever force me to be gagged from telling the truth, particularly on issues that soil the reputation of the vital institution of a free press. The facts speak for themselves.

ABC, Ted Koppel, and Nightline, rightfully should be ashamed of themselves.

I am not and never will be.

Has anyone noticed, that after 3000+ FB reposts, tens of thousands of Twitter comments, tweets, and re-tweets, neither Koppel, ABC, Nightline, or Disney corporation has uttered a single comment or response?

Their silence speaks for itself.

I, for one, would welcome their constructive comments on this issue. I believe it would contribute to a healthier state of the now very sad state of the institution of journalism.

I suspect they will be required to consult their massive legal department and corporate bosses before they are allowed to open their mouths.

And, the fact is, the powers to be at ABC, and the ABC’s that, today, control the media in free societies don’t really care whether they are selling toothpaste or quality journalism to free people.

If they can make more money selling toothpaste, they will sell toothpaste. Maybe journalism, and free people, would be better off if they choose to sell toothpaste.

There is a reason that public opinion polls rank the credibility and trustworthiness of journalists at the same level they do used car salesman, members of Congress, and lawyers. And I for one am tired of having my reputation soiled by them.

While I harbor no animosity towards ted Koppel personally, I do take grave exception to the undermining of the ethical foundation of the institution of journalism. I take that very personally.

Mr. Koppel, you owe an apology to the institution of journalism for soiling its integrity.

Corporate Power, ABC TV and Ted Koppel tried to censor the free speech of a free man in a free country. Fuck that.

Corporate power tried to steal my life work.

ABC  TV and Ted Koppel tried to censor the free speech of a free man in a free country.

Fuck that.

ABC TV stolen pictures frame grab from my copyrighted work. Count them–four separate credits demanding ABC be given credit for photographs taken when ABC did b not even have a staff person in all of Southeast Asia. This photo was hand delivered to the New York Times, The AP and posted on ABC’s website

Discuss freedom.

I would like to define this discussion, where it belongs: The power of corporate thugs using their money to put their jackboot on the necks of of freelance creative artists must stop.

It is time to draw the line and demand that we, as writers, photographers, musicians, creative artists are worthy. Our work should be respected and compensated as such.

Unlike the Atlantic magazine headache of a few months ago, let’s use our power to define the debate.

Please discuss.

Whatever the content of your opinion, of the  discussion, is fine. Whatever point of view you have, is legitimate.

But the censoring of free speech is not. Full stop. I will be damned before I allow a 10 cent lawyer to tell me when I can open my mouth and say what I want, or not, especially if it is the documented truth.

Fuck their money and their self delusion of power. I am free and intend to remain so.

My earlier blog post on the raw facts of the failed attempt of ABC TV–and their corporate owner–Disney–and Ted Koppel allowing himself to be a common streetwalker for his pimps, has gone viral.

I would like to hear from @ABC and @TedKoppel and @Disney what their response is. Are you selling quality journalism to free people, or are you only trying to deliver viewers and page hits to advertisers?

I respect Ted Koppel. It is why I chose him to bring the story of Pol Pot to North America. But he allowed himself to be a pimp for ABC/Disney in exchange for cash money. That is a fact. Of course he feels guilty. Ted Koppel, I believe, is a moral man. He was, ironically, the best that American TV had to offer. So take responsibility, Mr. Koppel. You will further contribute to the return of quality journalism to free people by doing so. You will be able to look yourself in the mirror without flinching at what you see. I can, mostly, now. As can you. But mostly isn’t good enough for you or me.

Musician’s Protest Goes Viral: Corporations offer no payment in exchange for “exposure”

Musicians say Enough is Enough for being asked to work for Free: One mans strongly worded refusal goes viral on social media

A Familiar refrain: “They consistently offer musicians nothing for their work, instead suggesting ‘exposure’ as a form of payment.”

The issue of for profit companies trying to increase their profit margin by refusing to pay creative artists for their work has once again gone viral, creating a debate which has metastasized on social media. Today it is by musicians. The similarities to the debate and discussion sparked in march of this year on the issue of writers and journalists facing the same problem are almost identical. See  https://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013/

Whitey, aka Nathan Joseph White, a musician from London, is the latest creative artist to put his foot down and publicly confront for profit companies asking to use his work, but refusing to pay him for it. The latest request by a major corporation to do just that prompted him to write a strongly worded, resounding no, and then post the message on both his FB page and twitter.

“I want a loud dialogue started in the music press about this shit. I’m sick of these people. I propose a collective blacklist of companies that play this shabby angle, enough. I donate music all the time to indie projects, students and those who need it but cannot pay. But these people… ugh,” Whitey wrote on his Facebook page today

Letter from Musician Outraged One last Time at being Asked to Give His Music for Free to For Profit Company

“This approach is becoming standard, I see an epidemic of these cheap manouevres. The income of musicians has already been decimated by file sharing- and smelling the blood in the water, there is a cynical trend for companies to play upon that struggle for survival. They consistently offer musicians nothing for their work, instead suggesting ‘exposure’ as a form of payment. Well ‘exposure’ only worked when the masses actually bought music, or if it is attached to a prominent cultural event. This kind of exposure… might as well pay me in Monopoly money,” he wrote on his FaceBook page.

In 2004, Whitey released The Light at the End of the Tunnel is a Train which was lauded as a critical triumph, recognized on numerous Best Of Year lists worldwide. In 2007, his album Great Shakes was leaked onto the internet, and as a consequence was never officially released, resulting in Whitey losing several mainstream licencing deals. Whitey’s work has been featured on Grand Theft Auto IV and on episodes of The Sopranos, House, One Tree Hill, The O.C, Kyle XY, Entourage, Breaking Bad, and CSI.

In May 2012, Whitey condemned”….ludicrously one-sided offers, arrogant A&Rs and hammering on closed doors”.

In December 2012, Whitey successfully launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his seventh album as well as making physical releases on CD and vinyl available for all his back catalogue.

Yesterday, Whitey rejected a Betty TV request to licence his music for free and reposted the email online to begin ‘a public discussion… about this kind of industry abuse of musicians.’ The post has gone viral.

British musician Whitey has had it with being asked to donate his music for free to big for profit companies. After the latest email from British company Betty TV, Whitey, aka NJ White, responded. Here is his letter, which has now had thousands of retweets on Twitter and thousands more on FB. The beat goes on……..:

“I am sick to death of your hollow schtick, of the inevitable line “unfortunately there’s no budget for music”, as if some fixed Law Of The Universe handed you down a sad but immutable financial verdict preventing you from budgeting to pay for music. Your company set out the budget. so you have chosen to allocate no money for music. I get begging letters like this every week – from a booming, affluent global media industry.

Why is this? Let’s look at who we both are.

I am a professional musician, who lives from his music. It me half a lifetime to learn the skills, years to claw my way up the structure, to the point where a stranger like you will write to me. This music is my hard-earned property. I;ve licensed music to some of the biggest shows, brands, games and TV production companies on Earth; form Breaking Bad to the Sopranos, from Coca Cola to Visa, HBO to Rock star Games.

Ask yourself – would you approach a Creative or a Director with a resume like that – and in one flippant sentence ask them to work for nothing? Of course not. Because your industry has a precedent of paying these people, of valuing their work.

Or would you walk into someone’s home, eat from their bowl, and walk out smiling, saying “So sorry, I’ve no budget for food”? Of course you would not. Because, culturally, we classify that as theft.

Yet the culturally ingrained disdain for the musician that riddles your profession, leads you to fleece the music angle whenever possible. You will without question pay everyone connected to a shoot – from the caterer to the grip to the extra- even the cleaner who mopped your set and scrubbed the toilets after the shoot will get paid. The musician? Give him nothing.

Now lets look at you. A quick glance at your website reveals a variety of well-known, internationally syndicated reality programmes, You are a successful, financially solvent and globally recognised company with a string of hit shows. Working on multiple series in close co-operation with Channel 4, from a West London office, with a string of awards under your belt. You have real money, to pretend otherwise is an insult.

Yet you send me this shabby request – give me your property for free… Just give us what you own, we want it.

The answer is a resounding, and permanent NO.

I will now post this on my sites, forward this to several key online music sources and blogs, encourage people to re-blog this. I want to see a public discussion begin about this kind of industry abuse of musicians… this was one email too far for me. Enough. I’m sick of you.”

Here is the email on Whitey’s Facebook page.

As I did with a request by the Atlantic Magazine in March this year, in an almost blueprint equivalent of his case, Whitey makes clear he does not object to playing music for free. He told DangerousMinds.net today

I don’t want payment for everything. I don’t even care that much about money, I give away my music all the time. You and I live in a society where file sharing is the norm. I’m fine with that.

But i don’t give my music away to large, affluent companies who wish to use it to make themselves more money. Who can afford to pay, but who smell the file sharing buffet and want to grab themselves a free plate. That is a different scenario.

Has the news biz come to this? Freelance journalists required to sign document forbidding writing anything negative about employers or advertisers?

Has the state of the news biz come to this? Freelance journalists required to sign document forbidding writing anything negative about employers or advertisers before being payed unlivable wage.

Freelance journalist not only asked to work for unlivable wages, but now required to sign away constitutional rights and fundamental ethical journalistic obligations, forbidden to say or write anything negative about their employers or advertisers?

August 21, 2013

An email exchange today between me and a freelance journalist requesting advice, comment, and suggestions after receiving the contract terms for her to write, still on a freelance basis, for a major U.S. news outlet which demanded she sign an agreement which demands she “cannot criticize, ridicule or make any statement” that “which disparages or is derogatory of XXXXXXX, or any of its officers, directors, agents, associates, consultants, contractors, clients, customers, vendors, suppliers or licensees.”

All comments from anyone who has had a similar experience or thoughts on its legality, ethics, precedence or suggestions on how to respond are welcome.

Below is the email exchange in its entirety, with the name of the news organization and journalist redacted at her request.

Dear Nate,

I am one of the folks who attended your panel at the AEJMC. Since you’re attuned to the freelance world, wondered if you’d heard of media outfits making freelancers sign non-disparagement agreements. A former editor who’s now working with XXXXXXX (a major, national politically oriented news site that is ramping up its breaking news section) contacted me to see if I’d write regularly for them on things I am expert on; but when their HQ in XXXXXX (A U.S. city) sent me a contract for work-for-hire, I was amazed that I had to agree I cannot criticize, ridicule or make any statement “which disparages or is derogatory of XXXXXXX, or any of its officers, directors, agents, associates, consultants, contractors, clients, customers, vendors, suppliers or licensees.”

   I informed XXXXXXX’s attorney that this could be several hundred people and that either I need a list of all these folks or they need to change their contract. She told me that this is standard in the freelance world which is nonsense in that I’ve written in the past 18 months for WaPo, the WSJ, CNN.com, the Economist and a bunch of other biggies and I’ve never had to agree to anything like this.

   Before I email her to say she’s quite mistaken, wanted to check with someone who also writes for big markets. I know you do not know me, but would you mind telling me if you’ve ever heard of this?

Sincerely,

XXXXXXX (Freelance Journalist)

 

 From me:

Hi XXXXX,

I have indeed never heard of such a thing, and I am guessing I would have. But I could be mistaken.

I can have your question answered, I think quite readily, as one of the side effects of the Atlantic kerfuffle is I have acquired a lot of new freelance friends who follow these issues quite regularly, religiously, and passionately.

My guess? It is XXXXXXXX’s corporate–or more precisely–legal side, that wrote this up on their own without precedent or forethought.

I am sure I can get the right answer and an informed one in a couple of hours if you want me to onpass your question to colleagues–other journos and freelancers. I can of course redact your name and, actually, even the reference to XXXXXXXXX, and I am sure I will have informed replies within a couple of hours.

It is of course, outrageous. The very premise of the function of a press is to not be censored from criticism, wherever it might lead to. Particularly not as formal policy of the news organization itself. And even more disturbing the requirement to write only approved propaganda regarding any advertisers or prominent figures associated in, it seems, any way whatsoever who have a financial or other vested interest in the news organization. Not to mention your own first amendment rights as a citizen, etc. etc.

 

It more than boggles and even more so disturbing, to say the least.

Let me know. And I hope you are well.

Nate

Email reply from the freelance journalist:

Dear Nate,

Would love to get any react you can. I had no idea who else to ask.

What is so crazy about all this is that XXXXXXXX first tells its writers it will only pay $200 per multi-sourced 800-word+ stories. I worked them up to close to $400 but that is still pennies. If they paid like $2.50/word, heck, I might say yes but for less than 50 cents a word? Really?

Yes, pls leave my name out for now. For XXXXXXXXX, feel free to say it’s a politically oriented news site that is ramping up its breaking news section but wants writers for cheap who are OK with signing away their First Amendment rights.

Thanks for your time,

XXXXXXX

 

Any comments, suggestions, or similar experiences and how best to respond are welcome.

“The ethics of not paying writers in exchange for ‘exposure’: A debate #paythewriter

Thanks to professor of journalism Kevin Lerner of Marist College for organizing a discussion on “The Ethics and Economics of Paying Writers with Exposure and a Byline” at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication held last week in Washington D.C.

A full transcript was made by Kevin Lerner and posted on his blog here: http://presscriticism.com/2013/08/14/free-lancing-the-ethics-and-economics-of-paying-writers-with-exposure-and-a-byline-an-aejmc-magazine-division-panel/

Some excerpts from Kevin Lerner’s blog are reproduced below.

AUGUST 14, 2013

FREE-lancing: The ethics and economics of paying writers with exposure and a byline, an AEJMC Magazine Division panel

Left to right: Kevin Lerner (Marist College), Matt Yglesias (Slate), Mike Madden (Washington City Paper), Kevin Stoker (Texas Tech University), Nate Thayer (Freelance Journalist); (photo by Elizabeth Hendrickson)

On Friday, August 9, the Magazine Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication sponsored a panel to discuss the “ethics and economics” of unpaid freelancing. Is it OK, the panel asked, for editors to ask journalists to give them stories in exchange for “exposure”? Is there ever a time when a reporter might want to make that bargain?

The panel was inspired by the freelance journalist Nate Thayer, as I explain in my introductory remarks below. I also invited Slate’s business and economics correspondent Matthew Yglesias; the editor of City Paper, Washington’s alternative weekly newspaper Mike Madden; and Kevin Stoker, an administrator at Texas Tech University and a scholar of media ethics. I thank them for their permission to post this transcript of the panel, which was held at the AEJMC 2013 conference at the Renaissance Washington Midtown.

Panelists:

• Matthew Yglesias, business and economics correspondent, Slate
• Nate Thayer, freelance journalist
• Kevin Stoker, Texas Tech
• Mike Madden, Editor, Washington City Paper
• Kevin Lerner, Marist College, moderator

Excerpts of transcript of August 9, 2013 panel discussion in Washington D.C. (For full transcript see http://presscriticism.com/2013/08/14/free-lancing-the-ethics-and-economics-of-paying-writers-with-exposure-and-a-byline-an-aejmc-magazine-division-panel/#comment-734)

Kevin Lerner: Hi everybody. The double room makes this look like a sparse turnout, but I’m hoping people will trickle in. My name is Kevin Lerner, from Marist College, and this is a sole-sponsored Magazine Division Professional Freedom & Responsibility panel called “FREE-lancing: the ethics and economics of paying writers—although the online schedule says “exposures,” which makes it sound like photography—and a byline. But I was not responsible for copyediting that. We’ve got a blockbuster panel here, and I’d like to start by introducing our panelists, who are all to my left. So, directly to my left, we have Matt Yglesias, business and economics correspondent for Slate. To his left, Mike Madden, who’s the editor of Washington City Paper, the alternative newsweekly. To his left, we have Kevin Stoker, an associate dean at Texas Tech and part of the Media Ethics Division here. And finally to his left, at the opposite end of the table from me, we have Nate Thayer, who is a freelance journalist.

So very quickly about where this panel came from. Some of you may know this story, and it all started with the man to my far left, Nate Thayer, who inspired this. So in early March of this year, Thayer had written a piece for NKNews.org, which is a North Korean specialist site, and North Korea is one of his specialities in reporting. He has over 25 years of reporting experience. He’s covered Cambodia, North Korea, Iraq. So an experienced freelance journalist, and he had written the piece for NK News. It had come to the attention of an editor at The Atlantic, and she contacted him and NK News and said, we’d like to rerun this piece, could you do a version of this for The Atlantic. And the piece was timely. You may remember when Dennis Rodman had been to North Korea. The article was about the history of “basketball diplomacy” in North Korea. And like any freelance journalist, he said yes, I would be happy to have the opportunity to have my piece on your site. And he asked the three questions that a freelance journalist wants answered: When is it due? How many words? And, How much are you going to pay me? And the answers came back: End of the week. 1200 words. And… We get 13 million viewers a month, but our freelance budget is gone, so I’m sorry, we’re not in a position to pay you.

And Nate put that up on his personal blog, the email exchange between him and the editor. And it took off. It hit MediaBistro and all of the usual media gossip sites and it created a discussion in the industry about what’s right and wrong about paying a writer. Is it ethical to “pay” just by saying you’re going to get 13 million people to see this? Is that OK? Is that something that a freelance writer might want to do? Is it different at the beginning of your career or the end of your career? When do you give your work for nothing?

So that’s the topic of this panel. I’ve asked the four panelists to have a little bit of an opening statement, to put their positions out there. Then I have a few questions. Then we’re going to open it up to you in the audience.

I’d like to actually ask Nate to start, since he started this whole thing, and maybe say a few words about the life of a freelance writer, since the post he put up was just called, very blandly, “A Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer, 2013.” Because it seems like half the time, a freelance writer is negotiating pay, and the rest of the time doing copyediting for corporations and public relations firms. So I’ll start with Nate. Just say a few words. I appreciate it.

Nate Thayer: Thanks, thanks for having me. Yeah, I should probably give a little bit of context to this, because believe me, I was as surprised as anybody else. I’m actually a Luddite; I’m a tech idiot, and I’ve been a journalist for 25 years. I was just saying to Kevin that you know, it was actually under two years ago before I actually even used a computer to research an article. I probably should have beforehand, but I just didn’t. My own personal focus in journalism is longer, investigative journalism, and much of my career has been spent overseas, much of it in countries where I didn’t even have electricity, or even less a telephone. And if you’re in the middle of nowhere, the fact is, the story doesn’t happen until you get back and file it, and it can be a couple weeks later. I have to say that I acknowledge that I really am an idiot and behind the times on some of this stuff. So in the context of that, I do realize fully that the future is in this amazing, wonderful, borderless world of free flow of information. I’m not that much of an idiot. I do have a blog. It automatically puts it on Twitter and on Facebook, and that’s about as complicated as I get.

Anyways, the actual reality was that this conversation I had with The Atlantic was in fact a very civil, normal conversation. I’ve had the same conversation with several hundred people over the last decade, and every freelance journalist has. It’s the norm.

I wasn’t actually pissed off. I was, you know, mildly annoyed enough to take the six-email exchange, cut and paste them, put a headline on it that said “A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist.” I think I put one line at the top, another line at the bottom, and I pressed send on my irrelevant blog, which had less than 100 readers a day, mainly family and colleagues, and which I never promote, and I went to bed. I woke up in the morning and I had 25,000 emails in my inbox, and I had made at that time exactly four tweets in my life. So I looked and I saw that within hours there were 100,000 people who had read this thing. It was a kind of odd day. In fact it kind of fucked up my day, and I really had no idea what really was going on. But I did find it fascinating. And 80,000 of these people came from Twitter, and another 50,000 from Facebook, and it took on a life of its own. But in fact it really had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t exactly a brilliant piece, in fact I didn’t even write it—it was an email cut and paste exchange. But it clearly hit a chord. Clearly, because by the end of the day, I had 500,000 people. I actually did the calculation: it was a 33,973% increase from the traffic the day before. So something had happened. But I really should say that was the full extent with The Atlantic. It wasn’t David and Goliath. I didn’t have some fucking beef with The Atlantic. There was no Nate Thayer jihad against The Atlantic. That was the sum total of my communication with The Atlantic. I hadn’t talked to them since eight years before when the then-editor actually hired me to go on staff for a considerable amount more than 13 million viewers reading my stuff. In fact it was $125,000 a year for six articles and I could write for anyone else. So I think the context of it is that the world has changed, as I think any freelance journalist knows. And I really don’t know how… I still get over 100 readers a day to that article six months later. And I’ve gotten well over 200 personal emails from other writers, including six Pulitzer Prize winners who said The Atlantic has done the same goddamn thing to them, many of them in the same week. So the idea that this was a mistake and it wasn’t their policy? They’re really full of shit. That’s one reason it took off. Because you know, they certainly had a budget to hire a PR firm, which may be part of the problem, so that they could lie about what their policy was, and then really piss off journalists. Because if you really want to piss off journalists, lie to them.

Whatever happened, I still haven’t really wrapped my head around it. But it is interesting, and it certainly resonated with me and really almost with everybody else I know who’s worked as a freelance journalist. This happens all the time. The fact is we are now in this amazingly positive new world of borderless information, but no one’s figured out how to make any fucking money out of it. So, you know, until they come up with a viable business model—which someone will, soon, because there’s a demand for quality journalism, and it costs money. So someone’s got to figure out a way to make that happen, and they’re going to figure it out soon. I just hope they do it before I starve to death and get evicted. Which would be a plus. But it’s all really positive. But I think we’re in this abyss period between the combination of the downturn in the economy, the downturn in the metrics of the print publishing industry, and the rise of digital journalism has made it really really difficult to make a living as a journalist. And not just as a freelance journalist. I mean the fact is, and I’ll finish this off by saying, the one really true reality is that you really can’t believe anything you fucking read anymore. You can’t. You can’t believe it on the Net because they’ve fired all the editors, they’ve fired all the fact checkers, and really, the motivation is to get as many clicks and hits on your web site as you can, regardless, really, if it’s true. And obviously, I’m exaggerating for the point of debate, to a degree, but that’s really the larger reality. So to me it’s a really serious problem. Obviously, it’s a serious problem because it’s making it hard to make a living, which frankly, three or four years ago, it never even crossed my mind. I spent 30 years, I’ve been very lucky, I’ve done well. It never was an issue. I never wanted to get rich, but I could always pay my bills. Now, that’s just not the case. So that’s one thing on a personal level, but on the, other, more important level, is the effect it’s having on the institution of the free press and free society. The quality of journalism that’s coming out now is horrific. It’s unacceptable. And the reason is because it costs money to do it. And some people are under the misimpression that people are going to accept substandard quality journalism in the stead of real reporting, and I’m absolutely convinced that they’re wrong, and that sometime, relatively soon, someone’s going to figure out how to create a model where everyone can make money in order to produce a quality product. So on that positive, I’m also ten days late on my rent.

Lerner: Mike, could you take this from the point of view of an editor? You’ve worked as a freelancer…

Mike Madden: …..Although, I wanted to ask you [to Thayer] you were talking about the traffic you got on that blog post, and I know you prefaced that by saying you were a bit of a Luddite, but were you able to quickly set up a Google AdWords thing and you could have made some money off of the exchanges.

Thayer: I have not made a penny off it. I did not organize advertising. Although, since this whole thing, I have also looked more closely at how you can make money. And there are all kinds of ways out there. One organization I do work for is called NK News. We have the same problem everyone else does: we’re trying to figure out how to bring quality news on North Korea to people who have an unhealthy interest in North Korea. And we haven’t been able to figure it out. We’re losing money on it. But everyone’s trying, and I have not succeeded………

Yglesias: Absolutely, but I think that is in a lot of ways the most promising kind of free content that you get is along those lines. You go to someone who is at The Center for Global Development and you say—I mean a particular problem that we have is that there’s not a huge amount of audience interest in foreign affairs. But there isn’t zero interest. It’s not a toxic subject, but it’s not a killer for us the way the Dear Prudence advice column is. And at the same time, advertisers don’t love Dear Prudence’s weird questions about bestiality, and they also don’t love articles about depressing famines in North Korea. For similar reasons. So if you want to get coverage of these super sad, medium traffic subjects, it’s difficult to turn that into tons of revenue. But we want to do it because we believe in journalism, and we want to do it because there’s some audience there, and when you can find opportunities to get people—it might have been that in the days of yore, they would have been the sources for articles—if you can get them to be the authors of articles, then that’s a real advantage. That’s an advantage to the world. And I think what The Atlantic does, where they’re just kind of propositioning professionals, professional freelance writers who are established in their careers, it doesn’t make a ton of sense. I wonder how much success they have getting anyone to actually agree to that proposition. I think we try not to say things to people that are going to be insulting or ridiculous for them to do. That’s common sense. But I think that the sentiment that I sometimes hear from writers—that people shouldn’t be doing stuff for free—well, who’s talking to you for these articles? It’s people doing things for free.

Madden: Yeah. We don’t get a lot of rewrites for $25 or $50.

Lerner: Is that different than writing for free?

Madden: It’s not that different, no.

Thayer: It is different. It’s fundamentally different, and I think it goes back to what several people were saying. To me, anyways, it’s the fundamental problem of for-profit media companies as a central business strategy eliminating paying the producer of the product which they sell so that they can increase their fucking profit margin. That’s really what it is. I write for free all the time. I’ve written for free for 30 years. I’ve written probably 1000 articles for free. Because, for whatever circumstances, for non-profits, or people where I’m interested in the issue. My blog is for free. I use Facebook copiously as a professional tool. That’s all for free. I don’t have any objection to writing for free. And depending on your circumstances, it’s true for a lot of people.

There’s a couple things that have struck me here. Slate still owes me $3000 for going to Iraq, for which they’ve never paid me, three years ago. Now this is not something new for any journalist anywhere. It happens to everybody. This idea of user-generated content, which I don’t know exactly what that means. There’s probably a more direct way of putting it. But the fact is that that, and the issue of, ok, people do work because they are going to be quoted or contributed to the article, I don’t buy that at all. They’re interested parties. Our job as a journalist is basically, I’ve spent most of my life sitting in a hotel room, waiting for someone to come down and lie to me. And that happens all the time in various degrees for all the information you get. And your job is to sift through it and come through with something that’s as close to what’s accurate and balanced and in the public interest as you can. One of the things that really bothers me about the new business model is that sure, there are people who will write for free. But most of them have institutional support. They have real jobs. They’re academics, they’re scholars, they have people who pay their rent, who pay for the bills to live. So they’re not actually journalists. They’re trying to sell a book. I mean I was a scholar in residence at Johns Hopkins at SAIS down the street here for a year. They gave me a full salary to sit in my office and think.

Madden: But you were still a journalist when you were doing that. You weren’t not actually a journalist just because you had some other way of paying your bills.

Thayer: No, I took a year off from my paid job with the Far Eastern Economic Review because I got kicked out of the country I was working in, and I needed some place to go, and they gave me this scholar in residence thing. And the thing that struck me was that all of these academics, if they could get quoted in the newspaper, that was really big for their resume. Or if they could even publish an article, that was really big. Now it’s standard but it’s being couched as legitimate news. It’s not legitimate news. They are an interested party, often, in the subject matter. And so I object to that being a substitute for legitimate, quality journalism. I read the stuff all the time. I find it interesting; it’s interesting source material. But I know that they’re not the internal standards of a news operation that has the whole sausage-making process that makes sure that when I send something in, it has to go through a very rigorous process to make sure that by the time it gets to print it’s not biased, it’s properly sourced, it’s corroborated, it’s accurate and so on and so forth. And that’s missing in so much, including the brand name former journalism outfits. There’s so much pressure to get everything out there quickly and to get page hits that the idea of quality news has taken a serious back seat, and that makes me very very uncomfortable, and I don’t think it’s a substitute for quality news.

And actually, on our panel here, both Slate and the City Paper, which I’m a big fan particularly of—I’d be a bigger fan of Slate if they’d pay me the money they’ve owed me for ten goddamned years—

Yglesias: That seems fair.

Thayer: But the City Paper is an excellent paper, and the fact that they each pay something means that what we do for a living is worthy, and I believe, I will go to my grave knowing that what we do for a living is not only worthy, it’s vital to a free society and it needs to be defended, and it costs money to produce, and someone’s got to figure out a way to do it. The fact is that people who own these publications—and they have to be private businesses; they can’t be government, otherwise we’d be Pravda, right—they really don’t care whether they’re selling toothpaste or news to free people. If they make more money on toothpaste, they’ll sell toothpaste. So I think the question everyone agrees with here is that someone’s got to come up with a way to first recognize the value of quality news, see that we’re not getting it now, and figure out a way to make money in the process so that we’re able to have it.

……..Thayer: You [Yglesias] mentioned an analogy earlier that people don’t want to read about bestiality, but in fact, I bet you, if the City Paper, which runs a wonderful column which often focuses on bestiality…

Madden: Oh, people love reading about bestiality.

Yglesias: No, I’m saying that advertisers don’t want to be on that page.

Thayer: I’m saying that the page right next to that probably has a higher advertising rate.

Yglesias: No, no…

Madden: It does, but only among a restricted pool of advertisers.

Yglesias: Chrysler doesn’t like bestiality………..

Audience question: Someone mentioned musicians. I’m with a group of harpists, and someone will say, “Oh, play for my wedding, you’ll get tons of exposure.” Well, you can die of exposure, too. But yeah, they feel this just as strongly, always being asked to do stuff for free.

Madden: That’s a particularly nervy pitch. How many people at their wedding are going to be in need of another harpist?

Audience: Exactly. And somebody mentioned before about profits, and it’s really true. These people are making obscene profits. I was at an organization where the top people were making $200,000–$300,000 salaries a year, and we were lucky to be squeezing $50,000 a year, which is not much in D.C. And if you look at a place like HuffPost, Arianna is just raking in the millions. So does anybody have an answer for—Huffington Post is a great example: they’re rich, they’re oozing money. There’s staff in New York, and you know they’re not there for free. But they won’t pay…

Thayer: I have an answer: Don’t fucking write for them. Arianna Huffington’s entire business model is based on not paying the people who produce their product, so that they can make money. She just sold her company for $317 million, based all on people’s writing. When the Atlantic article came out, I was kind of impressed by their hubris, they called me up and asked me to come onto the Huffington Post TV station and talk about this issue. And I said, “I’d be happy to, but you’d be under a profound delusion if you expect me not to bring up the fact that the Huffington Post is the poster child of this whole problem. And make sure that your bosses are aware of that.” And I got a call back about an hour later, disinviting me……

Thayer: But they also have what is a fundamental problem: most of their stuff is people who have an agenda, a political agenda, a financial agenda. And it’s being couched and presented as news. It’s not……

Thayer: Actually, for The Atlantic, and I actually do know this because I have literally gotten several thousand personal communications from people. The Atlantic policy is not to pay people. You know the line they said, “We’re out of a freelance budget, but we have 13 million readers”? I have exactly 412 emails from people who told me the exact same quote, verbatim. So it’s not a matter of them being out. So that’s an Atlantic policy. I think it’s part of their business plan—because it works. And I don’t hold it against them because their job is to increase their profit margin. That’s what they do, and if they can get that product and they think that readers will be satisfied with it.

But I think there’s a Ponzi game going on around this, that people are under the delusion that they’re actually getting the same quality news that they were getting prior to this wonderful, positive transformation that we still haven’t figured out how it’s going to work out. That they’re still getting the same quality news that the brand names produced before we entered this period. That’s just not true. It’s not true with TheAtlantic.com and what you get in print. It’s not true with the WashingtonPost.com and what you get in the Washington Post, and they’re saying that it is, that they’re using the same internal standards. And I think that part of that—to address your question—I used to work for Dow Jones, which owned The Wall Street Journal and the magazine that I worked for, called the Far Eastern Economic Review, and most of their people went over to Reuters, and a similar thing is happening with Bloomberg. And what they’re buying is people with a name. And I was approached by several people several years ago where they wanted to pay me more money than I needed or probably deserved because they thought that I had a name. The bigger thing that that translates into, and that’s really a big shift, which makes me uncomfortable with being trained—and I did not go to journalism school either, I started out with the Associated Press for several years and a number of other publications—and it makes me very uncomfortable to market myself. I’ve now kind of gotten over that, because that’s really where we’re going, where people have to individually market themselves in order to make a living. But what a lot of these companies are doing is that they’re putting the bulk of their money, and offering big salaries—and Reuters did this when they had the big turnover a couple years ago—they hired away all kinds of big name people for ridiculous salaries. And the journeyman workers at Reuters, who actually do very well because they have a very good union, get paid considerably less. So a big part of this money is going into the trend of people promoting themselves or where they think when people read the news, they look at who it is that’s writing the article—as opposed to what it used to be, and I’m more comfortable with, which is that when I pick up The New York Times, I know that there is an internal process, which means that whatever shows up in that paper has a degree of credibility. That’s why I buy that as opposed to, say, The Washington Times, or the National Enquirer. I know what I’m getting when I read it. And now I don’t know. And on the web you do not know what you’re getting at all. And in fact, a lot of what they say you’re getting, you’re really not getting at all. Because there is no vetting. There is no more internal sausage-making process.

I have a friend who is a Washington correspondent for a major news chain, who now pushes the send button when he’s sitting in Congress, covering a hearing. It doesn’t even go through an editor. That’s how much pressure there is to get stuff out quickly and what falls victim to that is the quality of news……….

Thayer: The Atlantic policy is—they’re actually on the record because they put out a press release after my ridiculous little post on my irrelevant little blog, saying that they do pay people and that this was a mistake by a new employee, and so on. That’s just not true. They don’t pay people. But what they do say is that what you read on The Atlantic, you can believe based on the credibility—and The Atlantic’s a wonderful magazine. I have no beef with The Atlantic. It’s a systemic problem. And certainly this poor woman, Olga—and I feel really bad because God knows what grief she got for this—she was just doing her job. But The Atlantic promotes itself as, when you read The Atlantic, you know what you’re getting based on their very high internal quality standards. My point is, in this new digital age, that’s all a lie. You don’t get that. The other transition period that we’re in is that people still believe that when you read The Washington Post online, or The Atlantic online, they’re getting the same thing that they got beforehand. And that’s just not true.

For the full transcript of the discussion with thoughtful, good arguments and points of view by Slate’s business and economics correspondent Matthew Yglesias; the editor of City Paper, Washington’s alternative weekly newspaper Mike Madden; Kevin Stoker, of Texas Tech University and a scholar of media ethics; Kevin Lerner, professor of journalism at Marist college; and excellent questions from an audience of journalism of scholars and academics, please go to Kevin Lerner’s excellent blog here: http://presscriticism.com/2013/08/14/free-lancing-the-ethics-and-economics-of-paying-writers-with-exposure-and-a-byline-an-aejmc-magazine-division-panel/#comment-734