Interesting article on the ESPN website by a regular writer, Rick Reilly. It relates to most fields, videography in particular. I know that some editors here have done a significant amount of work and then have it accessible for free downloads. If you substitute "videography" for writing in his article below, it works:
Rick Reilly:
... If there's one thing new journalism graduates can to do help themselves it's to stop writing for free. It only cuts the bottom out of the market and cheapens the craft.
And now, a word from ... Samuel Johnson: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
A columnist in the L.A. Times agreed with me. Plenty of writers, paid and unpaid, didn't. But it's stirred up a small hornet's nest among those who blog for free and make millions for sites like The Huffington Post (which just sold for $315 million to AOL).
A recent poll by the Media Industries Project at UC-Santa Barbara found that 69 percent of HP's unpaid bloggers think they should be paid to write, and that 96 percent percent of them think their stuff is as good as or better than the work of the paid staffers.
The truth is, if you're writing your own blog for free just to get practice and a little exposure, that's fine. If you're in college and you're taking an unpaid internship at a website or newspaper, that's fine, as long as you're getting college credit.
But if you're writing constantly for a website or magazine that is selling ads and making money and you're getting nothing? You're a fool. Demand to be paid. If you can't find anybody willing to pay you to write, maybe it's time to try something else.
Rick Reilly:
... If there's one thing new journalism graduates can to do help themselves it's to stop writing for free. It only cuts the bottom out of the market and cheapens the craft.
And now, a word from ... Samuel Johnson: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
A columnist in the L.A. Times agreed with me. Plenty of writers, paid and unpaid, didn't. But it's stirred up a small hornet's nest among those who blog for free and make millions for sites like The Huffington Post (which just sold for $315 million to AOL).
A recent poll by the Media Industries Project at UC-Santa Barbara found that 69 percent of HP's unpaid bloggers think they should be paid to write, and that 96 percent percent of them think their stuff is as good as or better than the work of the paid staffers.
The truth is, if you're writing your own blog for free just to get practice and a little exposure, that's fine. If you're in college and you're taking an unpaid internship at a website or newspaper, that's fine, as long as you're getting college credit.
But if you're writing constantly for a website or magazine that is selling ads and making money and you're getting nothing? You're a fool. Demand to be paid. If you can't find anybody willing to pay you to write, maybe it's time to try something else.