In his “The Media Guy” column, Simon Dumenco reported that he was invited to write for a new site called “ShowWatcher,” which is co-owned by Kevin Spacey. He’d get a byline and would be able to use his articles as clippings in his portfolio. Not only that, although the site wouldn’t be paying him anything, they would put on a party for contributors (date to be determined).
OK, fine, a lot of people do a lot of stuff for free on the internet. In fact, this very blog costs you absolutely nothing. And while I don’t solicit outside posts, once in a while I use one if it’s offered, and I don’t pay anything for it. However, I’m also not making any money on this blog nor have I been bankrolled. I do mention my books at the end of most posts, so I guess that counts as advertising, but other than that this blog is ad-free, even though I’ve had offers to run ads on it. I have the feeling you're seeing enough ads as it is.
However, ShowWatcher is connected to Scripted.com, which is part of Scripped, a company that raised $700,000 in seed capital. Couldn’t a little of that trickle down to the folks who are providing the very reason people will visit it, if they do—the content?
Ironically, one of the first (and, so far, few) articles on the site is called “Writing Your Way out of the Cube.” It encourages aspiring authors to keep writing because someday that will be the way to get out of working in a cubicle. The author of the article confesses he hasn't managed to do that yet. His byline won’t do him much good since he’s identified only as “Michael C. – freelance writer and screenwriter.”
Sunil Rajaraman from Scripted.com left a comment to Dumenco’s post, pointing out that “Huffington Post, BleacherReport, and at least ten other content sites I can think of off the top of my head all source content for free.”
Yeah, but as your mother might have pointed out, just because all your friends are doing it doesn’t make it right.
Rajamaran says it’s just a fun site “to give people an opportunity to express their opinions about movies and TV.” Which they can do in lots of places already, of course.
Let’s put this into perspective—nobody’s forcing anybody to write for free. However, its irksome that people who wouldn’t dream of asking a plumber to fix a leaky tap in return for being invited to a party sometime or a mechanic to replace their head gasket in exchange for being able to mention it on his CV think nothing of asking the same of writers.
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