Scott Carney’s WordRates to launch on Monday
Last spring we told you about the Kickstarter for WordRates, a website aimed at improving rates and working conditions for freelance writers. Since his successful Kickstarter ended, Colorado-based writer Scott Carney has been working with developers to bring WordRates to life. Last week he announced that the site will launch at 8 a.m. this coming Monday, October […]
Students’ voices can create change in the fight for fair wages
by Priya Duguay Toronto International Film Festival is creating quite the buzz again this year as a flurry of fans, film aficionados, and film fraternity (aka. Hollywood’s elite) arrive for the highly respected film festival. As a media student at Ryerson University’s Radio and Television Media Production Program (RTA) I’m constantly, like many of my […]
The Problem of Press Trips
by Keph Senett Freelance writers are masters of ingenuity. We have to be. Decreasing wages and increasing demands have made full-time freelance writing a losing proposition. Those of us who wish to remain in the field quickly develop strategies to make it work: We stack assignments, boost our incomes with part-time jobs, and network like […]
Yellow Pages Canada offering content mill rates for app writing work
CMG Freelance is advising freelance writers across Canada not to accept work from Yellow Pages that pays in the range of 6 to 9 cents per word. Story Board has heard from several highly experienced writers who were approached by Yellow Pages Canada last week with an offer to write “Smart Lists” for Yellow Pages’ […]
@crapwritinggigs Twitter account mocks low-paying jobs for writers
by Rachel Sanders $5 per post. $0.02 per word. It’s numbers like these that make a freelance writer’s heart sink. And there’s no shortage of jobs with this kind of rock bottom writing rate being advertised on the internet these days. For one writer, it all just got to be too much. Six months ago that person […]
The Globe and Mail urged to “pay the writers”
A small campaign has blossomed on Facebook over the past few hours as freelance writers press The Globe and Mail to pay the writers of their popular Facts & Arguments essay. In the comments section of a Facebook post celebrating the essay’s 25th anniversary writers have been complaining that the paper does not offer any compensation for accepted submissions. Toronto writer […]
Writer Scott Carney launches WordRates & PitchLab Kickstarter
by Rachel Sanders Scott Carney figures he’s beaten the odds and come out the other side: he’s become a successful freelance writer. What was his first clue? Everyone kept asking for his advice. “I get emails and phone calls and letters from writers around the country all the time asking for advice on how to negotiate contracts or how […]
President of NPAC decries Black Press newspaper’s call for volunteer photographers
by Rachel Sanders Stories about the devaluing of photojournalism are all too common these days, but it’s still shocking when things hit a new low. When John Lehmann, president of the News Photographers Association of Canada, heard that a newspaper in Victoria was advertising for volunteer photographers to cover weekend events, he found the news jaw-dropping. Even more […]
Unpaid Pan Am Games writing jobs raise ire
Last Thursday, Toronto freelance writer and investigative journalist Andrew Livingstone ran across a job ad posted by the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games. The ad was seeking five writers to produce feature content for websites, publications, newsletters and brochures. Duties included interviewing sources, fact checking and writing to deadline, as well as attending and covering events and […]
Nonvella aiming to get writers paid “what they should be paid”
by Rachel Sanders Tyee Bridge remembers the moment he first had the idea for Nonvella. “I was sitting at my kitchen table toiling away on a book proposal project for what was going to be a fairly long book about the end of the world – our fascination, obsession with it,” the Vancouver-based freelance writer told […]
