February 23, 2016 5:29 AM

If you're so good at what you do, why would you expect to be paid for it?

“I love this question,” said Stephen Hull, the editor-in-chief of Huffington Post UK, when Steve Hewlett asked him on Radio 4’s Media Show…why he doesn’t pay his writers. And this is the answer Hull apparently loves to give: “If I was paying someone to write something because I want it to get advertising, that’s not a real authentic way of presenting copy. When somebody writes something for us, we know it’s real, we know they want to write it. It’s not been forced or paid for. I think that’s something to be proud of.”

As you might imagine, being a writer, this hits close to home for me and engenders a strong reaction. While “F—K YOU!!” might be accurate and make me feel better, it doesn’t begin to address all that’s wrong with Hull’s clueless elitism. Writers should be sustained by their art and should be above mere financial considerations. After all, what does filthy lucre do but corrupt and commercialize the creative endeavor.

Says the man who undoubtedly never has to worry about where his next Big Mac is coming from.

Of course, I have to assume he’s not drawing a salary, because that way we know he wants to be editor-in-chief. We’d want to know his efforts aren’t forced or inauthentic, right?

It’s not enough that humanity consumes creative endeavors voraciously, even as they complain about having to pay for said creativity. Never mind that someone poured time, effort, and passion into making it the best it could be. Never mind that the artist/musician/writer in question has bills to pay, perhaps even mouths (other than his own) to feed. They have to somehow keep a roof over their head, even as they’re trying to be “real” and “authentic.”

If you’re a mechanic and you repaired a customer’s BMW, you’d expect to be paid for your work. If you’re a dentist and you filled a few cavities for a patient, you’d expect to be compensated for your time and expertise. If you’re a plumber, and electrician, or a landscaper…well, you get the idea, right? If the world was expected to run on “want to” and “authenticity,” a lot of very skilled people and their families would be starving and sleeping under bridges.

Welcome to Stephen Hull’s world, a place where artists, artisans, and professionals of all stripes live off authenticity, smoke, and mirrors- except Hull, of course; you couldn’t very well expect him to work for the love of editing, could you? After all, a man’s gotta eat…right??

Though I frequently read Huffington Post, I’ll confess to being disgusted by the way they treat their writers. Arianna Huffington’s cash cow is profitable in large part because much of its original content is generated by writers who aren’t compensated for their efforts. It’s the old “But just think of the exposure you’ll get!!” argument…as if you can eat, pay the rent, or buy diapers with “exposure.”

Once upon a time, both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post offered me a blogging gig…with the caveat that they wouldn’t be able to pay me. Two profitable media giants in such dire straits that they couldn’t afford to pay for content?

BUT JUST THINK OF THE EXPOSURE!!!

As you might expect, honored though I may have been by the offers, I (not so very) politely declined and made the point that if they wanted content, they should be willing to pay the provider. In my response, I made it clear that it’s plainly insulting to be offered an opportunity for a wider audience with the assumption that a writer will be so giddy about having a byline in a major media outlet that they’d agree to do it for nothing.

BUT JUST THINK OF THE EXPOSURE!!!

The problem, of course, is that society demands and eagerly consumes creative endeavors but doesn’t value creativity, evidently believing it just magically appears whenever desired. It’s one of the few fields in which there’s (with no sense of irony) an absence of a perceived need to pay for what you get. We love musicians, artists, and writers…we just want what we want without having to pay for it.

Writing is one of the hardest ways to make a living; I get that. For every Steven King, there are thousands of aspiring writers, some surpassingly talented, hoping and dreaming that someday they’ll be able to support themselves with their art. For most, it will never happen, which is why I suspect most of my readers probably don’t personally know a writer who doesn’t have a day job.

I’m not going to cry; this is my passion. I can no more not write that not breathe. It’s what I do, both because I love it and because I’m compelled to do it. Call it obsession or misplaced devotion if you must; whatever the name, I write because I have to. Would I love to be able to write full time and be paid for it? Of course…but the sad reality is that it may well never happen. If I obsess over that, I’ll end up a bitter old man who never writes another word.

I haven’t given up on losing my amateur status, but that’s really an issue altogether separate from my writing. With people like Stephen Hull sitting behind editor’s desks, that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. I can only hope there will be a special place in Hell for people like Hull, where writers like myself can finally and gleefully extract our pound of flesh.

Even writers deserve to eat.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 23, 2016 5:29 AM.

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