Why I stopped regularly pitching to the nationals
And switched to writing for efficient payers
Last week Emma shared her frustrations with late payments but also highlighted the publications capable of paying on time. It was a rallying cry to push back against poor practice and celebrate the good.
We had an amazing response from readers, so this week I have decided to follow suit and share my own experience of the good, the bad and the ugly publishers, when it comes to timely vs tardy payments.
I have definitely found that it is a real mixed bag and different sections within the same newspaper, can pay at different speeds. Much of this is due to the completely immoral practice of payment on publication whereby a writer isn’t paid until their piece is actually published. Once this meant I had to wait 14 months to be paid by the Guardian as they sat on my online lifestyle piece for over a year. This was in contrast to my regular stints writing for the money pages where I never had to wait more than a month or so.
But I have found that on the whole national newspapers are the worst offenders. Once I had to wait nine months and send endless emails to get paid by the Mail on Sunday. It resulted in a 50% kill fee. I didn’t learn my lesson, and wrote for them again, this time chasing endlessly until I was paid more than three months later.
But they are not all bad. In my experience Metro newspaper has a very slick system and pay soon after submission rather than on publication. So if they can do it, so can everybody else.
Following last week’s newsletter we had lots of people contacting us sharing their late payment woes. One was told by a national broadsheet newspaper editor that delays to publication, and subsequent payment, was ‘normal’ in the industry. The writer was commissioned for an article to be published in September 2023 and it is yet to be published. So five months after filing copy and still no payment.
This is simply not acceptable and it is not normal outside of these publications. It is just the twisted logic of some publishers, to exploit freelancers. Plenty of publications do not do this.
When I started my freelance career I wrote for The Times, Guardian and Telegraph. I wanted to feel validated by writing for these prestigious titles. But eight years later and I no longer pitch regularly to national newspapers, except for Metro. I have been burnt too many times payment wise. I don’t care about the ‘kudos’ of being in print or my mum having something to show off to her friends. I care about being paid on time and being treated fairly.
And I’m not the only one. One of our readers sent this message: “Having gone months with thousands of pounds owed at a time over the last two years, I decided to cut down working with one of the publications I’ve had a lot of work from as a New Year’s Resolution. Thanks for the reminder that the whole point of being freelance is being able to choose who we do and don’t work with.”
And that’s exactly the approach I have been taking for the past couple of years. Now I write for publications that pay on submission. Runner’s World is part of the behemoth publisher Hearst which owns hundreds of magazines and websites, but they still pay on time. I don’t have to wait until publication. So I continue pitching to them.
Future, another massive publisher, also pay on submission, not publication. So I continue writing for them.
The website loveMONEY, part of a smaller publisher, pay at the same time every month and on several occasions have even paid me before I have submitted any commissioned copy. They trust me, and I trust them.
Even the South China Morning Post, based in Hong Kong, are quick at paying me via PayPal. So I continue working with them.
These examples, and the ones shared by Emma last week demonstrate that it is not difficult to get your house in order and pay on submission. But some institutions don’t care and they don’t care because we continue to want to write for them, and we continue to put up with their unethical behaviour.
But for me it’s quite simple. If I have to chase you to be paid, you are simply not worth writing for.
We offered a right of reply to The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday but received no response.
Freelance work experience scheme now open
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If you can't make the induction briefing in March then don't worry as everyone who is registered is sent a recording. If you are a freelance journo who would like to offer work experience or mentoring then please email us freelancingforjournalists@gmail.com. You can be based anywhere in the world.
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Bye for now!
I learnt this lesson soon after turning freelance in the 1990s. Newspaper section editors routinely ignore pitches so why should they be any different when you submit your invoice? When I asked around freelance colleagues, some of them even admitted they were paid low rates or nothing at all. Freelancing for national papers is a mug's game unless you are a columnist and good mates with the editor. And they wonder why readership is drying up...