[...]always a big fan of linking to bloggers that I love but don’t get a lot of link love from[...]……

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.

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.

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.’

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.