Gawker has since hired full-time, salaried writers. It eliminated the 12-posts-per-day rule and changed the bonus to a reward for getting the most unique visitors rather than pageviews. Leaders of Gawker sites, such as Jezebel, get a bonus pool that they divvy up among their bloggers. That means that a piece of original reporting or thoughtful analysis that brings links from other blogs will be the most-valued content. Focusing on uniques measures a post’s reach and appeal to new readers—while at the same time de-emphasizing the engagement of core readers, who may be creating additional pageviews by refreshing the page to participate in a conversation thread. Each metric has its merits from a business standpoint, but tallying unique visitors is, arguably, a better model for rewarding journalistic success.
“Nick [Denton, Gawker’s owner] was trying to reverse-engineer a system to make an editorial choice based on quality, and justify it based on traffic,” says Pareene. And that made it a more rewarding, if still very demanding, place to work. “One of the ideas was, you could spend more time on one really good post instead of doing four short posts,” Pareene explains. “The incentive to keep working was there, but it wasn’t about volume, it was about quality.”
At TPM, meanwhile, the bonus pool attempts to combine different metrics so that it rewards reporters with different responsibilities, both those who generate mountains of short news items for regular readers and those who produce enterprise pieces that bring in more outside links.
Ironically, the Faster Times model works best not for the hungry kid right out of college, but for someone with a full-time job elsewhere. Clay Risen says he would consider working that way again as long it’s a side gig, not the core of how he makes his living. “I wouldn’t want to be in the position of having to write certain things because that’s what the numbers told me,” he says, adding, “There’s a place for that kind of writing as long as it’s not the only system.”
A few months after interviewing with The Faster Times, my big-media ship came in. I got a job as an editor at Newsweek, and all the generous benefits and financial security that came with it. If you’re reading this magazine, you probably know what happened to Newsweek shortly after I started there in September 2009. Now I am a freelancer again, which is a lot more like being a traveling salesman than I ever thought a journalist’s life would be. But at least I don’t work on commission—yet.
Welcome to the Internet news world. Having been in the newspaper business for the last 20 plus years, I have watched the demise of this industry to the rise of the non-paying industry of reporting/writing for the Online Publications. As much as I love to write, I'm discouraged by the inventive ways that publishers "don't" pay for their journalists today. So I had to branched out to include developing marketing for businesses in my area, to pay my bills; but can't get medical insurance from any of the three media companies I work for, muchless dental or Life insurances. As for investigative reporting, I believe this will be almost non-existing by the next decade, because it can't be paid for. Not to get too political, but remember the Framer's of the U.S. Constitution gave us the right for Free Speech, to be watchful and have checks and balances for our government. I don't see that happening in the future...do you?
#1 Posted by Sandie Reed, CJR on Mon 9 Jul 2012 at 02:52 PM
Nice to see CJR looking at freelance which is critical to the way journalism works today but this article does not really say all that much. It singles out a few online-only outfits and analyzes a model no one who is in the labor class the model relies on believes can work. This was not the right article on freelancing.
#2 Posted by tip of the iceberg, CJR on Tue 31 Jul 2012 at 01:49 PM
did your dad being a senior editor at Newsweek have anything to do with you getting a job there?
#3 Posted by just curious, CJR on Wed 1 Aug 2012 at 12:30 PM
I think this is an interesting topic and I agree with Sandie Reed. Part of what's been disheartening about going from working for mainstream newspapers to working as a freelancer is taking note of the fact that most outlets don't want to pay for quality journalism. They're more interested in paying for clicks on articles, or selling the notion of building a platform to writers instead of actually paying them what they're worth. So in essence, the failed and failing business model that is making print newspapers fall apart has been appropriated by the online world.
If you tell smart people who sell ideas for a living that what they do doesn't have any monetary value at all (because there are now content farms and the like) how do you expect them to create the kind of content that people will actually want to read? When people talk about the death of journalism as an industry, they fail to hash out the economics of what we do - it's all fine and nice to serve your country and your community around you by doing the grueling work of actually talking to people on the phone and in real life. But who can afford to do that if no one pays you to do it?
Essentially, the old school hierarchy of newspapers - where good old boys hired their friends, sons, nephews and other relatives for the prime beats - has now trickled into the blogosphere where the people with relationships with other editors get paid work and the rest of us have to play catch up. It's quite disheartening.
But eventually anyone who really values this work will have to come up with a personal business model, maybe even one that doesn't include producing journalism at all. We'll have to be more like Sojourner Truth, who said, "I sell the shadow to support the substance."
#4 Posted by Joshunda, CJR on Thu 9 Aug 2012 at 01:59 PM
Being a business journalist, I'd make the point that page views have an unlimited supply and a finite worth, so its quite obvious to me that the industry is in a race to the bottom.
#5 Posted by Anonymous, CJR on Tue 21 Aug 2012 at 06:44 PM
This click-for-bonus model is rather like the experiment in which monkeys are given simple tasks and rewarded with either grapes (the good stuff) or slices of cucumber. (see: http://youtu.be/g8mynrRd7Ak ). It will remain an entertaining demonstration (111,000 views, so far) so long as monkeys are not covered under American wage and hour laws.
How this system of non-compensation is deemed legal for human writers, no matter how young, foolish and unsintered, would make for an interesting* news article--were any media outlet equipped to report and publish such complex and non-nipple-baring legal insolence.
Absent that, the new media's servants, indentured and otherwise, will no doubt continue to debate the merits of their lords' various business models without conclusion. But it was the great blogger and receiver of corporately-funded public speaking fees, Samuel Johnson, who boiled it down: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
*To me, at least, and perhaps a few dozen other graying FON naifs; certainly not enough potential traffic there for anyone to get paid.
#6 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Sun 26 Aug 2012 at 09:49 AM