Dear Foster Kamer:
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 pleasant 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.
Dear Foster,
Perhaps against my better time management judgment, this is my response to the accusations leveled against me and Guest of a Guest by you in your recent Gawker “article,” in which you equated our compensation structure to “slave labor” and assumed that I don’t give a “shit about the future of journalism”. I understand how the line in the NYTimes article that described GofG as having a staff “largely unpaid” reads, however, your interpretation and understanding of this quotation is incomplete. This quotation, admittedly deserving clarification, attempts to convey the user-generated component of our content structure. It was not intended to obscure the traditional staff component of our content structure, which is paid and given health benefits (something most media companies do not offer). Your misunderstanding could have been remedied had you simply emailed me before writing your piece.
GofG is a new media website, like Gawker, which comprises of both traditional journalism elements and web 2.0 content generation elements, such as guest contributors, tweets, flickr pictures, user comments and more. It is our belief, as I believe it is Gawker’s, that a combination of both mediums speaks more to the world we live in and does not succumb to the shortcomings of adopting a singular prism.
We do not pay our unsolicited guest contributors or commenters in a traditional contractual compensation structure and neither does Gawker or Blackbook (both companies that you work for). We prescribe to the ‘virtous 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.
As the quotation “largely unpaid staff” is one of the major foundations on which you base your argument for journalism’s decline, I find it ironic in more ways than one that you neglected to seek any comment from me regarding this quotation. Furthermore, your attempt to lump our traditional staff employees in with our summer interns and blur the distinction belies your agenda and your failure to perform basic research.
I believe that the internship experience we provide not only fits the fundamental profile of most any summer internship in any industry, but exceeds that of other new media companies. Furthermore, your assumption that our interns “probably aren’t looking for a full-time gig in what [Rachelle] does,” demonstrates your inability to grasp the sheer concept of an internship in the first place. Internships by design are supposed to help people figure out whether or not they want a full-time gig in an industry. Both parties benefit symbiotically, one getting cheaper but unqualified help that can only commit short-term (i.e. the summer), while the other, with living expenses paid, getting the experience and skills necessary to signal employers when they are ready to enter into the full-time job market.
With regard to the traditional staff component of our content structure, as mentioned before, they are paid and given health benefits that I am fairly certain very few if any media companies in our position offer. I myself am one of them, and have been duly compensated for the roughly 3,000 original content posts I have written thus far. Our traditional staff payment structures include yearly based salaries, which five of our employees receive, and sub-contractual compensation for photographers who are set up by us with paid gigs that they may not have gotten otherwise. Some of our photographer’s images have been picked up by large publications including the New York Times, one of our writers has gone on to write for Interview magazine, and another went on to write for the now defunct Page Six Magazine. 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.
Your assertion about me “not giving a shit about journalism”, is a reckless conjecture that defies all disciplined reasoning and deserves as much attention as one made from tarot cards or a crystal ball. As you know from the Times piece, I left a secure job in finance to take on tremendous risk and a drastic pay cut to build GofG. As it stands, the world we live in isn’t perfect and the income disparity between industries does not always seem “fair” or “right.” A discourse on the root of the problem is probably one that exceeds the scope of both your and my skill sets. Journalism is by no means the only industry that feels the effects of income disparity and is by no means an occupation that anyone to my knowledge has been forced into. For better or worse, I chose to leave finance for journalism and I have taken full responsibility for my choices. 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.
Your populist demagoguery is hypocritical to say the least. Any media paradigm shift that GofG is a part of is one that Gawker was a part of or helped pioneer long before. You echo the all too familiar straw man populist arguments of networks such as FOX News that Gawker so eagerly and continually lambastes. Moreover, your idea that the onus of saving journalism should rest on the shoulders of media startups, especially during one of the worst economic climate in decades, one that has bankrupt major news corporations across the country, is preposterous.
The irony of your “article” thickens with your introduction of Sheila McClear as the spokesperson for paid journalism. As you now know, Sheila McClear wrote this piece as an upaid contributer for ASSME (contrary to your incorrect statement that she was in fact paid). Moreover, this crucial nugget of information correcting your assertion, was of course provided by an unpaid comment Sheila made on your piece. Alas, the pitfalls of not doing your paid homework seem boundless. But there’s more. ASSME in the past month has asked one of our own contributors to contribute for them for, you guessed it, free! As for Sheila, I hope that she is wrong about her ‘”career” going nowhere’ and that one day she can become a ‘real adult.’
So the philosophical imperative you pose, “is it bad for society to not pay writers?” takes on new dimensions. It definitely is when said writers don’t do their homework or proper due diligence. I suggest your new philosophical imperative be something like, “is it bad for society that writers do not pay for violating basic protocol of journalistic integrity?” 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.
Sincerely,
Rachelle Hruska
As a disclaimer, I will not address where our Hamptons house is or who owns it as you asked me to last night and this morning,for the safety of the girls that are residing there. Girls who are working their butts off for us while trusting ME to keep them safe from harm.
