Ah, funny you should ask …
Freelance HUGH KERR is annoyed at the tricks some papers use to avoid paying for copy
I AM a virgin freelance. I have written all my life and assumed it would be easy to make a living from it. It is not.
In my revolutionary youth I used to write a page a week for Socialist Worker on the tenants’ struggle, though I do remember the editor groaning when I brought in my handwritten copy. As a university lecturer for 25 years I wrote articles, learned and popular, for a wide variety of publications, but was never paid.
As an MEP I used to provide a weekly column for my local papers but usually it was written by my capable staff. Then I became a press officer for the Scottish Socialist Party in the Scottish Parliament and had the pleasure of making the news in the Scottish papers: I once gave what I thought was an off the record briefing to a political editor about the political impact of the Iraq war on the Scottish elections, only to find my words on the front page, and the First Minister of Scotland demanding my sacking as a press officer.
Last year the SSP was kicked out of the Scottish Parliament by the electors so I thought I would try my hand as a freelance. I wrote an article from the Edinburgh Festival on the amazing Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra from Venezuela and the system that produced it. The Herald said they really liked it but could they publish it on the letters page? Of course there would be no payment.
I said no thanks: the Scotsman had decided to carry it. They put it in their Platform section, which they told me is for readers’ comments — and is unpaid.
My next journalistic foray was in the Guardian. Roy Hattersley, who clearly is a rather more successful freelance than me, since he earns around £500,000 a year, had written a rather rude article about Scotland. His main concern was that his dog Buster was not allowed to pee on our graves.
I wrote a spirited reply that the Guardian liked and after doing three rewrites and supplying them with a picture it appeared in the centre pages of the print edition and in the online comments section. When I enquired about payment they said this was their Response section — which is unpaid.
So Hattersley got something like £500 for a few throwaway remarks and I, after hours of writing and rewriting, gave the Guardian a centre page article with a picture for free.
I am all for citizen journalism and for online comments sections, but when union members write articles which appear in print they ought to be paid NUJ rates for them. I attach this statement now to all the articles I punt to editors, but seem to be finding it more difficult to get them published.