Prostituting your writing talents for corporate pimps who troll for victims on the virtual streets of the Internet is not virtuous.
But in today’s editorial marketplace, freelancers are being pressured to become literate sluts to survive.
When legitimate journalism was the order of the day, there was a wall between newsrooms and business offices. And news writing and copywriting performed distinctly different functions. The former, to inform citizens; the latter, to persuade potential customers.
But today, the traditional barrier protecting the fourth estate — whose scope has broadened from print to include all manner of electronic and web-based media — has crumbled like the Berlin Wall. Information to enlighten and market has melded into a amorphous goop called “content.”
Meanwhile, the publication paradigm that supported print journalism well into this century is in demise. News has always been a loss-leader for hard-copy publishers. But due to a combination of declining ad revenue and growing availability of news online, old-time newsrooms are all but obsolete resulting in a glut of writers and editors who have to turn to the freelance marketplace to make ends meet.
And since the trend is for twenty-first century publishers to hire content providers on the open market — often to the lowest bidder — hungry freelancers are too often challenged to become amoral functionaries who provide soulless information that is judged, not on clarity and insight, but on how slickly it incorporates selected keywords into the text.
Some may shrug at this New Normal of writing for a living and quote Hyman Roth from The Godfather, Part II, when he says, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
Not the business we chose
But this is not business chosen by most of the writers and editors I know and respect. These journalists are overqualified for today’s “content” marketplace where skill sets are different and, I would argue, inferior.
To pay the bills, old pros are left to turn cheap freelance tricks for bottom-feeding content buyers.
Or retool for a new trade. Unfortunately, the trade most available is often in public relations. It’s still a form of prostitution — providing journalistic favors at the behest of the customer. But it’s more like being a BUtterfield 8 call girl than an Aileen Wuornos street walker.
It’s such a waste. But far be it from me to judge my fallen comrades. I, too, have sinned and sold my talents for projects in which I didn’t believe, often taking less than I’m worth.
It’s not the business I chose. But, for now, it’s the business I’m in.
