David Monagan writes that he’s resigned from Forbes after calling Irish President Michael D. Higgins an “acknowledged homosexual.” Higgins is not gay.
“The mistake was a whopper, and the fault was mine,” writes Monogan, who blogged about Ireland for the site. He intended that sobriquet for David Norris, Higgins’ onetime political rival.
Monagan then turns his fire on Forbes, not for making the mistake but for creating the conditions under which such an error could grow and spread.
“The fact is that Forbes, as a corporate communication enterprise, is now consumed by a mathematical game of just generating ‘hits,’ he writes. His base pay of $200 month worked out to less than $3 an hour for the 40 hours he spent on writing his agreed-upon four posts, Monagan says.
It has been a glorious summer in Ireland this year, with other distractions and responsibilities. All of a sudden, I found myself three articles short as July wound down. So after 16 hours of work on the Samantha Power article – for $50 (€38) – I hit the “post” button without that last, last review critical to my lifelong trade. And apparently, not one person at Forbes bothered a look as the post went global.
“[T]he guardians of the truth-seeking process are disappearing, foremost with that powerhouse of breaking news, Forbes,” Monagan says.
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