The High Cost Of Cheap Journalism

I woke up this morning with one goal: De-gay my resume.

It's now 5 p.m. and I haven't gotten anywhere.

One problem is, I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do that since I've spent the bulk of my career writing about gay and lesbian issues. ( I've penned 2 long-running gay columns, 175 episodes of a gay soap opera, the pilot episode of a gay sitcom, the pilot episode of a gay dramedy, this blog, and I have a book of humorous essays that are all based on my —you guessed it — gay life. I also went to a pretty gay college, live on the gayer coast — a little over 30 miles from the Golden Gay Bridge, I'm married to a woman, for fuck's sake, and ... ding! ding! ding! ...we have two cats.)

Have I done anything that isn't gay, you might ask? Yes! I currently edit a one-nipple-shot-shy-of-porn sex site, and a few years back I edited teacher's guides and materials for ... wait for it ... children in grades K-8.

Oil, meet water.

Now, you might think that living on the west coast, so close to San Francisco, would be an advantage for a lesbian writer, and you'd win a toaster. I can definitely get a job writing for a gay Web site or magazine. But, here's the catch: Gay mags and Web sites are notoriously poor. I make more money working three hours a day editing stories about an over-sexed and very straight superhero than I would if I worked full time for my own peeps. And, perhaps needless to say, the man behind the superhero mask doesn't give a rat's ass that I'm a lesbian.

So, here I sit, prepared to re-write a resume that's neither boring nor ugly, too thin nor even too long. It's just, well, not bringing results. In 2009, I sent out approximately 537 of those suckers, and I received four responses. Yeah, four. And of those four, only one offered a (barely) decent wage. That's the bad news. But here's the good news: That's one more than I received in 2008.

For the record, I've showed my resume to friends ... and friends of friends, including HR professionals and owners of companies. I've even shown it to other writers and people with six-figure salaries who haven't written a complete sentence since the invention of the Blackberry, and everyone agrees that it's a darn good resume. "Impressive!" they say. "Big words!" ... "You wrote a book? A WHOLE book?" ... "If I needed a writer, I'd hire you, even if you are gay!" Etc., etc., and I think they meant every word.

So, if there's nothing wrong with the content, length, font, grammar, color, feel or smell of my resume, if my resume is otherwise resumetastic, it must be too gay. Right?

Not necessarily.

And that brings me to the other problem: Maybe the issue isn't with my resume at all, but rather with my ego. Maybe instead of thinking that the folks who want to pay me $6.50 for an 1000-word article should go fuck themselves, I should bend over in front of them and say, "Please, please, please screw me!" Because these days, according to James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times, it appears we live in a culture that thinks very little of journalists:

What's sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common conception that writing is a profession — or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards but with something resembling a living wage.

Freelance writing fees — beginning with the Internet but extending to newspapers and magazines — have been spiraling downward for a couple of years and reached what appears to be bottom in 2009.

The trend has gotten scant attention outside the trade. Maybe that's because we live in a culture that holds journalists in low esteem.

Excuse me while I let out a primal scream.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not upset because I think that journalists are more valuable than, say, plumbers, nannies or the person that mows my lawn, but, let's face it, the invention of the printing press is right up there with, you know, fire and the wheel. So, yes, I'd like to think that I'm as important to my community as the Roto-Rooter man or a babysitter.

WTF has happened?

I have a theory, one that's based on a simple supply vs. demand model: I'm pretty sure that if we divided the country into two groups — one made up of well-read people; and the other consisting of folks who are one notch above illiterate (because they recognize the alphabet when they see it) — we'd be shocked to see exactly how many people fall into the latter group. Add that to the fact that any moron with a keyboard and blogging software can call himself a writer, and you end up with an awful lot of bad writers feeding mis- and dis-information to an awful lot of poorly educated people who aren't smart enough to know that what they're reading is bogus or that it simply sucks in a sixth-grade writing level sort of way.

In other words, the quality of writing demanded by the practically illiterate consumer and the quality supplied by the producers ("writers" that confuse its and it's and who are still demanding to see Obama's birth certificate) result in a balance — the quality demanded and the quality supplied are equal.

So, why in the name of capitalism would a businessman pay an experienced journalist $3 per word to write for an audience that will be satisfied with writing worth $0.0065 per word?

Integrity, you say? Pshaw! Wake up, man! We live in an age dominated by TMZ and Perez Hilton. It's useless to demand "all the news that's fit to print," when rumors and lies are where the money is. Integrity isn't for people who want to be rich, it's for people who actually have souls. Besides, business is business.

Look, I don't believe that all the cheap bastards posting ads for writers on Craigslist have it in for journalists; I think they're just short-sighted and taking advantage of the market. Think about it this way: If someone told you that you could be a writer plumber in the time it takes to open a Typepad account and based on the fact that you know a noun is a person, place or thing how to flush a toilet, you just might do it. "I can pull that off!" you might say. "Left is hot; right is cold! Easy-peasy!" And you wouldn't be alone, because plumbers make big bucks. Before you could look into your first clogged bowl and ask, "Hey, isn't that the Ty-D-Bol man?" the market would be flooded with folks who call themselves writers plumbers, but have no idea how to clearly connect and arrange concise information sweat pipe. After that, writing plumbing rates would go down and it would only be a matter of time before we all drown in our own sewage.

But that's a bad analogy. Isn't it?

Comments

[Tracy]

"...an awful lot of bad writers feeding mis- and dis-information to an awful lot of poorly educated people who aren't smart enough to know that what they're reading is bogus or that it simply sucks in a sixth-grade writing level sort of way."

There are an awful lot of bad 'journalists' making six figures (plus!) doing the same exact shit. That's another reason a lot of respect for your trade has gone down the shitter.

"("writers" that confuse its and it's and who are still demanding to see Obama's birth certificate)"

I'm not a writer, I rarely confuse "its" and "it's", but I'd still be interested in seeing that alleged birth certificate. Not a big issue to me, but yeah, you know, show it, that's all.

"...the quality demanded and the quality supplied are equal."

This fact applies to so many things - our education system, many who receive entitlements, and government workers, just to name a few...

People often rise to the lowest level that's expected of them. And I believe that's the case, whether they're unpaid anonymous bloggers, or overpaid talking-heads belching talking points. Indeed, "...the quality demanded and the quality supplied are equal."

"So, why in the name of capitalism would a businessman pay a experienced..."

Doh! Bad timing for a typo sister! ;)

You're definitely in a tough market Kim, I wish you the best. Genuinely, and I think you know that :)

[Kim]

Thanks so, so much for pointing out the typo. If I made more money, I'd be able to afford a proofreader! ; )

As for Obama's birth certificate, it's right here: http://msgboard.snopes.com/politics/graphics/birth.jpg