A few months ago, Serena Coady, a London-based journalist, wrote on Twitter that she was courted by an editor at an entertainment news site that “rhymed with Green Pant.” That wasn’t newsworthy; it was the limbo champion rates, which Coady shared.
The rates, via a screenshot. Coady now limits who sees her tweets. She did not respond to my Twitter direct message requesting an interview. (Screenshot/Twitter)
My disgust — what the hell are “Super Features”? — soon hardened into indifference. I’ve been a full-time freelance writer since 2008. Inspired by Roger Ebert’s annual “Movie Yearbooks” and Entertainment Weekly during its smart, snarky mid-’90s heyday, a healthy chunk of my career was spent trying to be an entertainment writer. I saw gigs like this, built on speed and clicks and being kind of, sort of, not really adjacent to showbiz, all the time.
I had some of them. I wrote posts for an entertainment blog for $6 a pop. I profiled actress Rose Byrne, who was lovely, for the unpleasant rate of $12. This personal essay on dating shows fetched me nothing.
I’ve written about my travails as a movie reviewer before. The balcony isn’t just closed; I fear it’s bricked solid.
Coady’s post caused me to summon these gigs in a wave of hot shame and a thought: How does anyone make a living writing about culture these days? That was the shanty of a pitch I sent my editor. I talked to four first-rate culture writers (including Soraya Roberts and Chris Vognar) who were chatty and honest. Will Harris, an excellent celebrity interviewer who has written for The A.V. Club and Vanity Fair, has lost so many clients this year, he’s had to sell blood plasma. (When we talked in late May, he was considering substitute teaching.)
As I thought more about the assignment, I realized bias had taken over. I’ve been around the block, opened a bank account, and dated the green-eyed girl in the apartment complex. Awful rates are everywhere.
In late December, I responded to an ad in a supplement of my local weekly newspaper, looking for writers. Why not, I thought. It’d be nice to do some stuff around town. The rates were bad when I inquired in 2015, but they must have increased. When I asked the editor about pay, a red flag the size of the Duggars’ picnic blanket unfurled: “I’ll get back to you.”
A few days later came the least surprising email I have ever received: $45 for a 500-word article; $75 for a 1,000-word article.
Thank you. Maybe I’ll go out to dinner — by myself.
Subpar pay in every area of professional writing, not just journalism, belies a larger, virulent problem. There’s a fallacy, prevalent in any subject widely considered a passion (pop culture, sports, politics, etc.), that a writer would do this for free. Therefore any fee is a winning Powerball ticket. Too many writers, and I include the past goatee-wearing version of myself, happily agree to this arrangement while neglecting a key fact: all writers are a business unto themselves. Being a capitalist is usually an insult, but for freelance writers it’s a necessary chaser to passion, that perpetual invitation to be stiffed, even outright conned.
“Good work begets good assignments,” the excellent culture writer Anna Peele told me via email. “If you rush stuff or do it the easier way because it’s not worth spending too much time or energy for a low fee, you get more assignments like that.”
I bet somebody saw Coady’s rates (or the ones I listed) and instead of recoiling, thought, “What’s the problem? Those sound great!” It is — if writing is a hobby. Or if you’re a willing client at the Bank of Mom and Dad. The rest will stick with it until they deflate from having to write three posts a day on Easter eggs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or a round-up of Twitter reactions to the finale of “Ted Lasso” or Rihanna’s Instagram feed, confused as to why what was supposed to be fun now feels like homework. A few unlucky writers will convince themselves this is the pathway to success. “My post on why Mr. Potter is the real hero of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ will hit and The Ringer will finally come calling,” not realizing that they can reach out to the editorial staff there. Ask the right people, and you can get an email address to an actual person.
Passion is the fuel; pragmatism drives the car. It took me years to realize that you do not have to write sports for Sports Illustrated or write about celebrities for People. You can be a specialist who writes for a variety of places. Among the outlets where my sportswriting (or sports-adjacent writing) has been published in the last three years: Next Avenue, AARP the Magazine, Ohio Magazine, Philadelphia Magazine, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Fatherly, InsideHook, Shondaland, GQ.com, and this very site. (In fact, this piece was cited in 2020’s Best American Sports Writing.) None are sports publications, but every outlet wants a good story, an interesting subject, a readable tie-in that aligns with analytics.
How I wish I knew that at 23, when editors at magazines and large newspapers felt remote and foreboding, when the fear of “no” paralyzed me. I didn’t know that sometimes a no is a not yet — “Hey, this isn’t right for us, but keep us in mind.” That’s how you form a marketplace.
You don’t even need that. If I were convinced the world needed to hear my opinion on “No Hard Feelings” or “Oppenheimer,” I’d have a newsletter where I can write what I want, when I want, rather than be a foot soldier in the clickbait content cavalcade. Where there’s a chance to parlay that writing into assignments or maybe someday a book deal. Even if you don’t get paid a dime for that newsletter, it has to be a more enjoyable use of your time.
There’s no shame in subsidizing your passion. I know an excellent culture writer who works in fundraising for a college. One of my favorite film critics works in the restaurant industry. Peele, whose celebrity profiles have appeared in GQ and The New York Times, currently writes a weekly Twitter quiz for a wealth management company.
I do not consider these writers sellouts or compromised souls. They’re smart. Writers need to fill the dead time somehow. Copy editing pays my mortgage. I’ve done white papers, corporate gigs, e-books for private clients. Writing for association publications and trade magazines pays well. And I still take those assignments without any regret. They’re different rides on the same playground. Sometimes you have to climb that weird rope thing or ride the rusted-out spinner from the Carter administration until the big-ass slide becomes available. Bennett Miller (“Capote”) and Christopher Guest directed commercials after their theatrical triumphs; John Cassavetes acted in “The Dirty Dozen” and “The Fury” so he could make revered independent films.
You don’t have to discuss your day job as an investment banker or post about your teaching gig. But you might learn something anyway. For nearly four years, I was an editor at a trade magazine. The job was terrible for many reasons, the least of which is that the office resided next to a cemetery. But having to write at least one 2,500-word article a month taught me how to write long stories quickly as a matter of course.
When I quit that job, I worked in chain bookstores for 18 months. I was required to talk with customers, who occasionally treated me with active disdain, for hours on end. I chatted with more strangers in a month than in my three years as a newspaper reporter. It’s all material.
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I pursued entertainment writing in earnest from 2000 to 2014, about 10 years too long. The most I made for a movie review was $200; a celebrity profile for a regional publication, where the editor added an ass-kissing coda without my knowledge, $1,000. At my peak, I averaged $400 a month, a terrible number if you love groceries and electricity.
The enthusiasm ran dry around 2011, when I realized that I’d rather spend Saturday morning with my wife than trek to the multiplex to see “Dolphin Tale 2” through drooping eyes for $25. (FYI: The original price for reviews was $45.) I wasn’t getting better — and I had no desire to do so. Passion had become a yoke. When I freed myself, I found the time and energy to revive my career without compromise by devoting more attention to another passion. Sports, I found, had more avenues and applications. And the pay, I’ve found, is much better.
Sometimes you have to give up something good to get something great. I frequently think of this story from author and pop culture journalist Joe Queenan (“Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon;” “Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler”), whom I interviewed for ICON, an arts and entertainment magazine based outside of Philadelphia, in 2012.
I wrote four novels and I wrote about 100 short stories, and I got about 60 of the stories published in literary magazines, not the big ones. I also had them published in some skin magazines and things like that. I had this epiphany.
I was at this small book fair at New York University in 1981. There were all these people there that I sort of knew by correspondence. There was this one guy there who was going to publish my novel. He invited me to a party in Chelsea. So we went to these people’s loft, and all of the people were gathered around in this circle and they were mourning this woman whose husband put out a self-published magazine that had bankrupted them and then she had committed suicide, I think. They were all sort of telling anecdotes about her, holding hands. And I thought, Wow, this totally sucks.
I went into the bathroom to get something to drink, because they said there was beer in the bathroom—and the entire tub was filled with Old Milwaukee. And I just said to my wife, “I want champagne. That’s my idea of being a writer. I’m going to be like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. This is not for me.” I just stopped. It was very important for me to be successful as a writer. And it was very important for me to be successful as a satirist. But it didn’t particularly matter to me in what form that happened.
When I talked with Queenan that day, he was still writing novels “recreationally.” He found a path to incorporate what he loved while making a living authentically. How do you do that? Sorry, you have to find that on your own. If it helps, I suspect few involve “Super Features.”
This article was updated to clarify when the author spoke with Will Harris.
