Globe and Mail arts columnist Russel Smith's latest column was titled Why don't Creative young writers care if they get paid? It looks at the trend of young, creative people writing for magazines for no pay, or simply posting their work online. Specifically the Huffington Post, a very successful online magazine that just sold for $315 million yet pay its contributors nothing. Young writers do this to get themselves published, and because the editing process is so much simpler than other magazines or newspapers. Smith worries that this trend will undermine the whole system. Someone asks a writer to do a piece; they research, write and edit it; the piece is edited by the paper and then published, the writer is paid. That system is changing and Smith finds this troubling.
Like so many other things in the age of the internet, the way writing is published is changing. My generation has grown up with posting our every thought and idea (creative or not) online. We don't expect to be paid for it, the novelty of having our work out there in the world has yet to wear off. Young people understand that it's hard to get a publisher's attention, so they turn to social media to get their ideas out. For the most part this works if you can scream loud enough. Videos and blogs can go "viral" and you have the chance of becoming famous/discovered quickly. We know the pay will come later if someone sees the worth in our work.
This column is biased, Smith says so himself. He is part of the older generation that had to work their way through years of boring pieces and hard research work in order to have the honour of having their opinions printed. He has a point. Although it is nice to hear young peoples' opinions, because they can differ so much from that of a middle-aged opinion writer, young writers don't have the years of experience that are so helpful when writing opinion pieces.
The column is accurate in the sense that it is true that Huffington Post is an online magazine that was sold in February to AOL and that it publishes content from bloggers without paying them. Some of these former contributors are now suing Huffington Post, demanding payment, but as Smith pointed out; these bloggers willingly contributed knowing they wouldn't get paid.
This article is responsive to the issue in that most people are not aware of the debate going on between writers. The article brings attention to a very interesting issue that could have a major effect on the publishing world in the future. At the same time, Smith's article is just one of many opinions on the issue and as his opinion on the matter is quite strong, it is likely to incite opposition and more debate.
This article offers an interesting viewpoint on an issue that is just one of many in our fast-paced world of changing technology. It touches on issues of consumerism and the age old debate of ownership of one's creativity. This article also shows that the idea of writing for free is just one more threat to the traditional newspaper.
