Cord Jefferson, at Gawker:
All in all, the creative landscape is starting to look more toxic than it’s been in our lifetimes: Artists with million-dollar checks in their pockets are telling other artists that they shouldn’t expect to get paid; publications are telling writers that they shouldn’t expect to get paid, either; and meanwhile everyone wonders why we can’t get more diversity in the creative ranks. One obvious way to reverse media’s glut of wealthy white people would be to stop making it so few others but wealthy white people can afford to get into media. But in the age of dramatic newsroom layoffs and folding publications, nobody wants to hear that. So we trudge on, forgetting what a luxury it is to do what you want to do for a living rather than what you have to do to survive.
I like paying for the things I use, because I like to use quality things. But I am rarely paid for my writing, because I write poems. Yet I do enjoy a great deal of writing on the web that I don’t pay for, much of which I am not even given an opportunity to pay for. Jefferson is responding to a little dustup produced when a freelance journalist was asked by The Atlantic—The Atlantic!—to submit some work for free.
I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children.
In poetry, in general, while there are prizes to be won, we pay for excellence in honor. It’s no mistake that the most prestigious prize for young poets (congrats to Eryn Green for winning the Yale) carries the least amount of prize money. Yet we must eat, so aspiring writers find ways to do it and, as Jefferson is arguing and Thayer pointing to, the game is rigged (and getting more rigged than ever). Those of us living any semblance of the dream are likely doing it because we didn’t have to earn every bit of money we ever had to spend (thanks moms and dads).