Peter Maass did a nice article in The New Yorker called “The Toppling.” It gave details behind the truth of the Baghdad statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in the early stages of the Iraq invasion. I’m huge fan of both the New Yorker and long-form journalism like this, but even so, I was left thinking “ok, nice piece” rather than “get the Pulitzer committee on the phone!”
Then I read this Niemann piece about how the article came to be and started wretching. Maass got rejected several places, couldn’t find a home for his article, and had to get grants and non-profit money to allow him to complete the piece. Here’s the money quote, literally:
“The Toppling” represents, in all, “probably a year’s worth of work,” Maass says; given the Shorenstein stipend, that works out to about a $30,000 yearly salary (plus the “significantly less” but “not insignificant” ProPublica money). “If you’re 25 or 30 years old, then it’s okay to get that kind of money for a year’s work,” Maass says. “But I’m not.”
Sports is not a war, but I know tons - tons - of writers making far - far - less than $30k for the work they’re doing. More power to Maass for believing in his work, finding a way to finance it, and getting it out there, but maybe the real lesson here is that writers are going to have to be more creative about financing, that they’ll need to find ways to do it themselves rather than relying on the old model of being on staff.
Newspapers and magazines are struggling with this same issue, but writers for the most part are not. We’re seeing paywall experiments, subscription newsletters, and even outright patronage. Soon, we’ll see The Daily, perhaps the most ambitious journalism experiment in years. (Anyone know who they’ve hired for sports?)
Funny thing is that while bloggers were laughing and dancing on the graves of newspapers, they didn’t realize that the sand was shifting beneath their feet as well. Quality stopped mattering in an age of “good enough” and with that, free became the model not just for readers, but for writers. The acceleration of loss is troubling, but even more troubling is that no one’s noticed.
