On Friday, April 1st, a series of tweets were exchanged between my friend, writer Jeff Deeney and the person behind Metro Philly’s Twitter account re: a dispute about fees owed Jeff for freelance work. See this. And this. I was a little surprised to read this exchange coming from a corporate account. A lot of disgruntled individuals tweet at corporate accounts, celebrities and other public accounts. But most account managers are trained not to respond to deliberately provocative comments. So for a while, I mistakenly thought I had been duped by an April Fool’s joke.
But when I sheepishly contacted Jeff to laugh with him about it, he wasn’t laughing. He really hadn’t been paid for work he had done three years ago for Metro Philly. Jeff sent me over a series of emails showing his efforts to contact Metro Philly and get compensated for his writing. No luck. According to Jeff, “I wrote a series of covers for them in 2008, they nominated them for a Keystone award, then stiffed me.”
Now I don’t exactly condone Jeff’s approach. Heck, we only became friends after we got into a not-so-friendly debate about the hipster grafter. But I do understand the frustration that comes with not being paid for work. Don’t get between a writer and their money. Just. Don’t. Newspaper writing ain’t no easy job. Do right by your freelancers, Metro Philly. Pay the writer.
If you think Metro Philly should pay their freelancers, you can contact city editor Brian X. McCrone here. Or just tweet at him.
People need to be reminded that non payment for services rendered – as well as other types of work place duplicity – is the general mindset of the movers and shakers in virtually all corporate structures. It used to be that unions could ‘discourage’ this sort of activity, but sadly that rarely is the case these days.
cheap-ass motherfuckers. I’m copying this to facebook with the header “wanna get ripped off? write for the Metro.”
That is really disgusting. Truly.