(from Rachelle Hruska) Dear Foster Kamer:

Tuesday, June 23 2009

(from Rachelle Hruska) Dear Foster Kamer:

rachellehruska:

Last night, among several other friends, I bumped into Foster Kamer at M2 for the Nightlife Protection Committee launch party. We discussed his last post for Gawker titled “Slave Labor- the New-New Media.” Foster was extremely plesant and a good listener. Before bumping into Foster, I had worked on the piece below, which I still think deserves to be posted, as it contains my thoughts on this topic. Foster deserves a slap on the wrist. That being said, I look forward to the next social event I will get the pleasure of running into him.

That is the intro. The full piece is here. It is good that everyone’s thinking about labor practices. My reactions to specific quotes below:

[The Times article] was not intended to obscure the traditional staff component of our content structure, which is paid and given health benefits

This is a normal and healthy thing, and the proper way to run a small business. A large motive behind my response is how there are a lot of voices… not Rachelle’s… that insist that staff work can be procured for less than this. I see this sometimes explicitly being advised in tech jobs; in media, the “staff of unpaid interns” is usually kept more quiet.

(Note: HuffPo also has a paid house staff. I dunno what their benefits structure is like. But in a general sense, the people over there who clearly and legally need to be paid are, in fact, paid a regular salary.)

We prescribe to the ‘virtual circle’ philosophy of web 2.0, like Wikipedia, but in addition provide a stage for name recognition, pending editorial review. Any of our content that is user generated is hand-picked by paid curators and screened to make sure it meets Guest of a Guest content standards.

This is a totally valid business model to try out. I would just never advise it. Wikipedia has an inconsistent and largely mediocre media collection, to say nothing of the quality of many of the articles on the site. For project leads, I would tell them that $50/hr for professional services is more than worth it. For creative workers, I’d tell them that being on Wikipedia and $2 will get you a ride on the subway - maybe something you should do if it feels rewarding, but as far as pick-me-up labor goes, it’s one of the least likely ways to win a job.

Internships by design are supposed to help people figure out whether or not they want a full-time gig in an industry.

Internships are supposed to be something more than this, and I’m sorry to see that the poor labor practices and assumptions of the existing media world are filtering into the new companies. (Rachelle, there was a very good reason all those MTV freelancers went on strike two years ago.) This deserves elaboration but for another time.

I see no reason why GofG will not continue to be a great environment for someone to build a long-term paying career or to acquire the skills necessary to begin or step to a new one.

Theoretically, yes. In practice, there is a “no guarantees” element to this promotional hook, and the industry is hemmoraging staff positions. I went through this in 2004 and found it all wildly impractical; it’s much worse now.

While I don’t know for sure what will solve the ills of the media industry, be it low salaries, shrinking advertising spending, and readers’ unwillingness to pay for content, I’m going to bet that your shoddy journalism is not helping the problem.

Sorry, Foster. She’s got half a point here! That’s after half a point deducted for calling what they do at Gawker “journalism”. As Denton said himself, any journalism that occurs over there is incidental. The constant peppering of prose with expletives should be a large clue for that. This argument also applies to the subsequent arguments about irony and hypocrisy on behalf of Gawker and ASSME. And it’s been long-established. To quote (or mistakely attribute!) John Carney, it’s always 2003 somewhere. (And to quote myself, “In the future we will all be terrible journalists.”)

Maybe the salaries in journalism are low because they implicitly pre-empt a collective penalty for all transgressions in the writing community. In other words, maybe all writers get a little more unpaid because of the unprofessionalism of a few.

I’m going to say, in mild terms, this was a far far misplaced zinger and that I solidly disagree. It is true that a writer that could reliably edit themselves would save headcount, and therefore earn a larger salary. But let’s be realistic - writing is a fine art, and all of the industries based on production of the fine arts have labor pressures due to widespread interest. There simply isn’t enough, has NEVER been enough, economic output to release those pressures. Therefore, all labor roles based on production of the fine arts have been and will continue to be low-paying relative to high-economic-output industries. Writers and photographers have a hard time paying the rent because bankers and lawyers are always able to pay more to get what they want, and can therefore reshape the market to their benefit. (Like, in college, when the professor intended to grade on a curve, but the two smartest and most responsible kids in the class did so well on the final exam that your B- went down to a C+.)

As a matter of fact, writers are probably overpaid for what they do, relative to its current economic output. I think you all agree with me, and I’ll show you why! When a hedge fund manager makes a $150k bonus, we think they must have gotten screwed over; when a blogger gets $150k for a book deal, we all tear our hair out and scream to the heavens. And Peter Feld is right: Arianna Huffington has no obligation to pay anyone for delivering scant traffic to her web venture. If she sent any of those people a check for a 50% cut of what they actually generated in economic output, she would be paying 1000x more for required check printing and postage. Not getting your nickel for generating 3,000 pageviews is a white whine.

This is already too long, so: The End!

I won’t go into much of this, because, well, it’s 7 pm and there’s drinkin to be done, but, BV, I was struck by this part:

As a matter of fact, writers are probably overpaid for what they do, relative to its current economic output. I think you all agree with me, and I’ll show you why! When a hedge fund manager makes a $150k bonus, we think they must have gotten screwed over; when a blogger gets $150k for a book deal, we all tear our hair out and scream to the heavens

I’m not so sure that compensation is actually all that tied to current economic output. For instance, that hedge fund manager—did he really generate that much value, or was he part of a market shell game? In classic terms, if that blogger writes the book, she’s created a useful thing; what has the fund manager created?

Point being, people often get compensated on the basis of a perceived value (especially at the higher end of the scale) versus any real contribution.