Don't let this happen to you...

Before anything else, take a glance at this Gawker piece on the "laziest" freelancer. Then consider the the message sent to the PR person who forwarded it to Gawker. I noticed a few things:

• On the surface, it largely looks like a call for sources from PR firms.


• She mentions the size of the article and number of tips, but I've seen PR people who ask how big an article is going to be.


• She lists what she's covering, probably a quote from the editor.

It doesn't read all that differently than many requests for sources that I've seen. Now, maybe the writer in question actually is asking PR people to write an article for her. Or maybe the PR person in question has a grudge against the writer and decided to torpedo her career. Perhaps the truth is something in between, or even completely different. That doesn't matter.

What matters is how easily a writer can be tarred in front of potential clients and in such a way that clearing the air and limiting the damage is impossible. This can happen when posting on writers' boards, when either an editor is lurking or another writer decides to drop a dime. It can happen with a whisper into the ear of prospects. And it can happen in a public and particularly brutal way, when the publication, Gawker in this case, has so much taste for venom that it publishes a story on the strength of one anonymous source and apparently without making an effort to reach the subject.

Any writer should know that words can sting. When you're putting a request in writing, in a way that can be distributed and reproduced, take some care and consider how you present yourself. Emails and online posts can be notoriously ambiguous. Be sure you've nailed down the meaning before letting someone else nail it down for you.

Gawker Media Traffic Jumps with Page View Incentives

Blogger Simon Owens emailed me about a post he had on Gawker Media. Early in the year, the publisher of such popular sites as Gawker, Gizmodo, Valleywag, and Consumerist told its bloggers that they would receive a base amount of money and then bonuses based on the number of page views they got. He analyzed the change in page views since the announcement. The changes were anywhere from 23 percent to 83 percent. In thinking about the changes, a few things became apparent:

• It's impossible to say what caused the growth - general expansion of blog readers, Gawker Media marketing programs, or the work of the bloggers themselves.
• There's no way of knowing how much of the growth will stick with the blogs, or if it will churn, requiring ever more effort to attract people to maintain the numbers.
• From these figures, there is no way to translate between page views and unique audience members.
• People may come by periodically to read the sites, or they may be landing there after a search - and that would put a different interpretation on where exactly the efforts of the bloggers had been most effective. Do readers drop by because of the voice of the writers, are the writers doing their work in such a way that it comes up on popular search results, or are they breaking stories that drive interest?

Whatever the case, it looks like the Gawker sites would be worth some visits and analysis if you're writing a blog and want to get tips on how to help attract more audience.

Gawker Pay? Gaak

According to Radar, Gawker has cut the pay schedules of its blggers for the second quarter running:

"We've broken the site budget," Gawker Media owner Nick Denton told the staff in an email yesterday. The only answer, from the company's perspective? To keep getting more traffic—but to pay the producers of that traffic less for each pageview. So for the second and now, according to a new memo regarding the pay rate for the quarter that began this week, third quarters of 2008, the company has reduced the rate of pay per pageview. Other Gawker Media sites, including Jezebel, also had their pageview rate cut.

It used to be that if a writer got a million page views a month, that translated into $7500. Given the amount of work it takes to get that much attention, the money seems short. But now it's even shorter, at $5 a thousand, or $5000 for that million page views.

So more ad inventory—actual pages served—should mean more income for the company—particularly since Gawker seems to be mostly increasing in pageviews not attached to any writer. At the same time, reducing the cost of the creation of that inventory also gets the company more of the income that is attached to a writer. Kicking down less money to the workers seems, at best, cheap.

How about predatory or exploitive? Those are pretty good words, too.

Dealing with "Harsh" Rejection

Gawker has a tale of a writer who received what she thought was an overly harsh rejection from a Village Voice editor. Here's the original note:

I'd shoot myself before I had anything like Julia Allison in this paper. What you're pitching sounds like the 256th version of Sex in the City, and that's so played out. I'm satisfied with the two sex columns I have now, and I really don't have room for additional columns at the moment. But thanks for thinking of us.

What did the writer do? Send it on to someone who was likely to publish it. Any doubts as to whether this will get back to the editor? If so, then I also have a bridge I'm trying to peddle.

From what I've seen in a thread on Freelance Success, some writers think the editor was trying to be funny, and some agree that he was being nasty. My take is that it shouldn't matter. If you don't like the way an editor works, then don't work with the editor. This tactic has not only burned the bridge with that editor, but anyone that editor knows. Such things don't stay secret.

but even more importantly, whether you like the tone of the editor's response or not, it was a gold mine for marketing. Suddenly you've got a grasp of the editor's sensibilities and tastes, great market info (no room for more columns, meaning that to sell one you'd have to find supplant the weakest column there, which is a tough sell), and a bit more understanding of editorial strategy than when you started. This is a prime case for not taking things personally and, instead, being thankful that someone let his guard down and helped you by accidentally disclosing information that you couldn't buy.