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A viral Twitter thread containing anonymous accounts of poor freelance pay by various outlets, ranging from the all-too-prestigious New York Times down to SEO grifters made the rounds recently, prompting renewed discourse around the merits of working for inadequate compensation, and how the media environment has been built to privilege outlets’ own writers over outside contribution by their freelance counterparts. What that discussion has been largely missing however, is a systemic analysis of what conditions freelancers to settle for so little, and why it is so hard for workers of the white-collar variety as a whole, to bolster their claim for better pay, especially as union enrollment in that sector is ever-so-steadily on the rise.
Working in the media space, much like other labor, has been constructed in such a way that the barrier to entry is intentionally steep only for the most stubborn to dare piercing through. The prevailing myth out there is that if you have good clips, you’ll inevitably have a chance at making it into an outlet and earn a living wage, but the truth of the matter is, working in media is currently one of the most unstable ventures as more workers have been let off from the sector this year than from 2014 to 2017 according to…
