It’s Not All About the Money: Legitimising youth literature
An exciting opportunity has come up for young writers at one of Australia’s most prestigious platforms for the discussion of literature, ABC Radio National’s The Book Show. They are looking for five young bloggers to write about book culture on their new blog. I will certainly be applying, and I encourage other young book lovers to do so as well.
The gig is unpaid – advertised as ‘the best unpaid gig in town’ – and a discussion was brought up by Lisa Dempster about whether this is because blogging is not a legitimate form of publishing. The discussion of blogging legitimacy baffles me, especially attempts to articulate support for the medium, and the cries of outrage when another media outlets ‘exploit writers to leverage their online presence’: if the writers didn’t consider it worth their while, they wouldn’t do it.
The debate also reminds me of the equally superfluous debate about the life expectancy of the novel as a medium. Debating the legitimacy of blogging or the longevity of novel publishing is less important than simply blogging well and publishing good novels.
Reading the post highlighted a division that I think is worth exploring further. For these purposes, legitimacy might be arrived at through payment or publication of writers. I think there is much more at stake here than the meagre incomes of a couple of writers – embracing this opportunity, paid or unpaid, will yield far greater cultural capital than the alternatives proposed by its detractors.
Legitimacy through Payment
If the legitimacy-through-payment debate is to be had, it could be easily applied to many art forms that people practise without remuneration: graffiti, long-stitching, or writing books themselves – Lisa herself has done a lot to reveal the appalling financial conditions under which Australian authors labour.
Brian from Fitzroyalty mentions – with some exasperation – legitimising blogging by paying bloggers is difficult in a medium that barely has a functioning economic model. Instead, another idea of legitimacy needs to be considered when evaluating blogging.
Legitimacy comes from other sources in the blogosphere – sources that traditionally legitimate mediums are lacking, such as the amount of conversation generated by your writing, which is inhibited in most print mediums. And the inclusion of young voices on the ABC is worth more than the validation a young writer might get from being paid by any other institution. The prospects arising out of a gig with the ABC far outweigh the likelihood that they’ll never pay for blogging.
Legitimacy by Publication
Young writers are apprentices pushing their way into an industry with an abundance of suppliers (writers) and a dearth of distributors (editors/publishers). The under-representation of young writers’ voices in our traditional outlets makes this even harder. These positions at the ABC will help young writers to advance their position in this pursuit, by teaching them the ropes and getting their name out there. These are legitimate means for the development and promotion of youth literature.
They could choose not to publish them, which is the model alluded to by Mel Campbell, editor of The Enthusiast. In the comments to Lisa’s post, Mel criticised the ABC and Express Media1 for not paying young contributors, and stated their alternative policy of restricting the number of contributors and writing a lot of the content themselves instead of ‘exploiting inexperienced workers’.
Not only does Express Media have an honourable tradition of paying its contributors, the organisation also works extensively at legitimising young writers in other ways, such as by providing professional development and experience in the industry. As with the ABC publishing youth literature on this blog, this constitutes a greater contribution to the legitimacy of their careers than paying them ever could.
I would rather see a million young writers working for free than a handful of writers dominating the industry because the market found a way to pay for their time. These young writers are producing content for free anyway, on their own blogs – that the ABC is leveraging some of their resources and infrastructure to endorse this content is legitimising enough.
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- Disclaimer: I am a former employee of Express Media, and I have been paid to write book reviews for The Book Show, so maybe it’s easy to go into bat for these guys, but in reality I’ve seen the value in providing professional development for young writers, and I’ve experienced the same writing for the ABC; I certainly would have written for the ABC for free if it meant getting my name out there the way it did. [↩]
Awesome Ryan, thanks for continuing the discussion. I agree that the Bookshow blog is offering an excellent opportunity for young writers, and that the bloggers involved will get a lot out of it. However, the discussion of whether writers should write for free and the question of whether publishers should expect them to are two different issues. I also don’t think this is an issue particular about young writers; more, writing in general.
Brian mentioned there is no economic model for blogging. This is mostly true, however, you could also say there is no ‘economic model’ for anything the Bookshow and Express Media do – both organisations rely on government funding – and yet both orgs still pay for the words that appear in print or on air. Thus the question of the legitimacy of blogging comes up: why are some words valued more than others.
Such a grey area – I’m looking forward to hearing what others think.
I wanna get paid to write reviews! One day…
But in the mean time, I do love it, and I’m don’t mind writing for free for now. When I was studying journalism in uni we’d get people coming in every week offering us unpaid work experience, it was only really worth doing if it was a well known media company.
Oh, Just read Lisa’s response. You’re right, two different issues. I might tackle this in more depth as well. So many different ideas, and that’s just in my head.
I agree with Lisa on the separation between the two debates.
I will apply because only I will miss out on this opportunity, and not actually change much like force writers to be paid in the future.
I think things should be valued in other ways than being paid, but there is an economic reason why I think writers should be paid, rather than just being a sign of legitimacy.
I would love to earn enough from writing to not have to work another boring dull, time-sucking job, to have more time to write.
I think arts in general is undervalued because we live in a society where things are only seen valuable if they can make copious amounts of money. And it’s hard to survive economically if you’re doing something that doesn’t fulfill that ‘need.’
I think another problem is writer expectations. I’ve been interning for a fairly well known media organisation and getting paid for some of my articles there – both on the web and in print. Prior to this, I’d been writing for and editing various websites and publications for years, much of it was unpaid.
Other interns, after seeing my bylines, then wanted to get their own pieces published, however, their quality of writing wasn’t good enough. (I’m not being arrogant, by the way.) I encouraged them to apply for unpaid writing gigs, which would give them a chance to find an audience, develop a voice, learn how to write well, etc. They haven’t followed up on this – I think because there’s less prestige involved. Instead, they send me e-mails asking for advice on how to pitch for the larger known publications, but without a writing history to back them up.
I agree with the argument that people have to start somewhere, and often they will be unpaid. But I’ve found that the more you write, and the more you prove that you write well and can meet deadlines, this will lead to paid writing in the future. The writer-editor relationship is crucial and editors want to work with people they know are reliable.
I think that if the publisher has the commercial funds to do so, then yes, they should pay for content – but only if the quality of writing is good enough. Not all publishers have the capacity, and I feel like if they don’t have the money, then they should offer professional contacts and an awesome mentoring process in return.
Firstly, thanks for the reminder with this one. I saw it come through on the Express Media email and had completely forgotten about it. Now I might just remember to actually apply…
As for the debate about unpaid work, I always try to look at it like this: one can be ‘paid’ in many different ways for work, it doesn’t always have to be financial reward, so if I’m not receiving any cold hard cash for something that I’m doing, I won’t do it unless I’m being paid in some other way. As you mentioned, unpaid work can be a legitimate way of learning and developing, not to mention making contacts, all of which, to me at least, is some form of payment.
My brother, who’s doing an environmental science degree, often talks about the hidden costs of certain industrial (or whatever — he’s got the enviro jargon but I don’t remember it) practices, and how we as a society can end up spending far more than we were able to calculate just looking at the financial cost. While that’s definitely a debate that should probably occur elsewhere at this point, I think the principle is the same.
I, like you, “would rather see a million young writers working for free than a handful of writers dominating the industry because the market found a way to pay for their time.” That said, it’s obviously important that financial payment isn’t withheld to the point where young writers can’t actually eat or pay their rent. A difficult balance to get right, I guess.
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