Re: [FleetStreet] Digest for fleetstreet@googlegroups.com - 2 Messages in 1 Topic

[Malcolm Wheatley]

You have to adapt.  There are outlets available today that didn't exist pre-digital, and which want different things, and pay different rates.

Am I doing exactly what I did twenty years ago?  No.  Am I wordsmithing for well-paying (genuine media industry) clients?  Yes.

My core niche specialism, and the magazines associated with it -- well, 'nuff said.  But you have to move on.

Malcolm

PS Is it really 15 years I've been posting to you lot?  I guess so.  Congrats to all the survivors.

===============================

On 23/03/2013 17:26, fleet...@googlegroups.com wrote:

  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/fleetstreet/topics

• spectacular rate drop [2 Updates]

 spectacular rate drop

bob <word...@yahoo.co.uk> Mar 23 04:36AM -0700  

This post describes experiences mirrored in my 'trade' : music. We all do
freebies, but you have to be firm sometimes. A wednesday night might earn
expenses only, typically £50-80 for a 3-4 piece band. But you have to take
your own PA equipment. Still not too bad if you live locally. But
increasingly we find offers to 'support' main-title bands for - as one of
you already mentioned - 'exposure. Our rule is, Friday and Saturday night
gigs, particularly those the punters must pay to see, must be paid.

Another parallel is, we find ourselves occasionally sidelined in favour of
young, sometimes very young indeed, arrivistes who genuinely do play
happily for exposure. And many of them are every bit as good as we
are. Little buggers.

Their equivalent in your business is probably the free stuff in the
Guardian and elsewhere, under such headings as 'Experience' ; 'What I'm
Really Thinking' ; 'Blind Date', etc. The give-away is at the end of such
pieces: 'Do you have an experience to share? Send.....'etc.'

Trouble is, like teenage bands, some of these people really can write.
'Thinking' is particularly well-written. Little buggers.

 
On Wednesday, 6 March 2013 10:17:13 UTC, PJ White wrote:
 


 

heather <heat...@blueyonder.co.uk> Mar 23 12:29PM  

>Send.....'etc.'
 
>Trouble is, like teenage bands, some of these people really can
>write. 'Thinking' is particularly well-written.
 
 
That, and all the other stuff, is *subbed*, though Bob!
 
It does not fall onto the page without considerable editing, cutting,
shaping....making it consistent in style, and as you say,
well-written.
 
There is also editorial input in deciding what experiences/case
studies and so on to use. It's not the equivalent of a band turning
up to play for buttons/nothing at all.
 
Most first-person stuff in all print media is 'as told to', though I
have done first-person stuff and it was all my own work.....but I am
a professional writer and I would be mortified if I had to do an 'as
told to' about myself. I have done 100s of 'as told tos' for all
sections of print media over the years.
 
Heather Welford
 
 
 
 
 
--
http://www.heatherwelford.co.uk


 

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[bob]

Hello Heather.  Yes.  I do see the difference.  But those subs are in-house.  They are there anyway, and add value.  Just as the pub- and club-proprietors ‘provide’ seating, food drink, but still get a free band which does not add to their operating costs but provides pure profit.

 

My point was, I admit, rather skewed in favour of the poor ‘Experience’-type peons who do not get paid for their copy, howsoever amateurish it might be when first received.  But the paper gets it free.

 

Malcolm.  15 years, eh?   Coming up to 14 for me.  I entered the site accidentally, a tyro on computers, redundant from my day-job and recently shorn of my hobbyist scribbling for a weekly mag.  I was looking for a literary agent to see if I could place some of my stuff elsewhere.   I saw that the site wasn’t what I had thought.  But I stayed on out of admiration for – inter alia – that journalist who died of cancer, sorry, his name won’t come, and one PJ White of this parish, both of whose wit and fine writing impressed me.

 

This post took me back to those days, particularly a thread on journalists’ fees, around 1999-2000, in which some of the more successful of you told of earnings of an average (London, anyway) of £6-8 thousand per month.  Sounds breathtaking now.  Could it have been true?

heather <hea...@blueyonder.co.uk> Mar 23 12:29PM  

[Ryanscribe]

Are you sure that wasn't £6-8k per year, Bob?! ;)

[Bryan Betts]

Indeed - I suspect even the top London ones probably weren't pulling
much more than �4-5k a month back then.

On 03/25/2013 11:54 AM, Ryanscribe wrote:
> Are you sure that wasn't �6-8k per year, Bob?! ;)
>

[Guy Clapperton]

The *very* top were, including of course the late John Diamond. Column in the Times, presenting Tomorrow's World, what do you think? He was also a brilliant support on Fleet Street but had a bit of an inability to understand how anyone else could be earning less.

Regards
Guy

On 25 Mar 2013, at 12:41, Bryan Betts <br...@journalist.co.uk> wrote:

> Indeed - I suspect even the top London ones probably weren't pulling much more than £4-5k a month back then.

>
> On 03/25/2013 11:54 AM, Ryanscribe wrote:

>> Are you sure that wasn't £6-8k per year, Bob?! ;)

[PJ White]

On 25/03/2013 10:51, bob wrote:

�

This post took me back to those days, particularly a thread on journalists� fees, around 1999-2000, in which some of the more successful of you told of earnings of an average (London, anyway) of �6-8 thousand per month.� Sounds breathtaking now.� Could it have been true?

I think John Diamond (thank you for the compliment, but as a writer he was many leagues ahead of me - he would never have had this this awkward parenthesis for example) was probably earning that. He and Jemima Harrison would do regular Daily Mail 800 words for �1,000. John had his Times stuff and they both did glossies. They were in demand, popped up in all kinds of places - Cosmopolitan, Conde Nast Traveller - all of which paid very well. John used (he said) to do them very fast - like 12 mins for a Times piece. Even allowing for exaggeration, it was a totes different world from today. Don't know how many were in the same boat. Not many, I guess, since it's scarcity that brings the dosh.

PJ

[Marc Beishon]

On Monday, March 25, 2013 1:25:12 PM UTC, PJ White wrote:

I think John Diamond (thank you for the compliment, but as a writer he was many leagues ahead of me - he would never have had this this awkward parenthesis for example) was probably earning that. He and Jemima Harrison would do regular Daily Mail 800 words for �1,000. John had his Times stuff and they both did glossies. They were in demand, popped up in all kinds of places - Cosmopolitan, Conde Nast Traveller - all of which paid very well. John used (he said) to do them very fast - like 12 mins for a Times piece. Even allowing for exaggeration, it was a totes different world from today. Don't know how many were in the same boat. Not many, I guess, since it's scarcity that brings the dosh.

I think we'd be surprised how much quite a few of the columnists are being paid, often for utter tat (Boris Johnson's £250k springs to mind). 

You can still make a reasonable amount, a small uncut Diamond shall we say, by covering several markets, working across the jobs (editing/writing/subbing/production), and doing corporate stuff.

M.

[heather]

>On Monday, March 25, 2013 1:25:12 PM UTC, PJ White wrote:
>
>
>I think John Diamond (thank you for the
>compliment, but as a writer he was many leagues
>ahead of me - he would never have had this this
>awkward parenthesis for example) was probably
>earning that. He and Jemima Harrison would do
>regular Daily Mail 800 words for �1,000. John
>had his Times stuff and they both did glossies.
>They were in demand, popped up in all kinds of
>places - Cosmopolitan, Conde Nast Traveller -
>all of which paid very well. John used (he said)
>to do them very fast - like 12 mins for a Times
>piece. Even allowing for exaggeration, it was a
>totes different world from today. Don't know how
>many were in the same boat. Not many, I guess,
>since it's scarcity that brings the dosh.
>
>
>I think we'd be surprised how much quite a few
>of the columnists are being paid, often for
>utter tat (Boris Johnson's £250k springs to
>mind).

This is true, though I think eye-watering sums
are less common these days except for a small
handful of names.

I know that 'celebrity' columns in the
red-tops/celeb mags pay ridiculous amounts - to
the celebrity, that is, not to the staffer who
actually writes the stuff. Someone who does this
when the regular staffer is not available tells
me it consists of a 10 minute phone call to
discuss some 'ideas' and the celeb gets several
hundred (rather than several thousand) squid.
Things might be different for sports - no idea
about that.

>
>You can still make a reasonable amount, a small
>uncut Diamond shall we say, by covering several
>markets, working across the jobs
>(editing/writing/subbing/production), and doing
>corporate stuff.

This is what I do, as well as teaching/training,
though I still don't make as much as I used to.

Heather Welford
--

[Marc Beishon]

On Mar 25, 1:59 pm, heather <heath...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> This is true, though I think eye-watering sums
> are less common these days except for a small
> handful of names.

A good benchmark is George Monbiot, who declares all his earnings at
http://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-interests
- the Graun pays him about £62k a year for his column and blogs.

> This is what I do, as well as teaching/training,
> though I still don't make as much as I used to.

My turnover still looks quite good but profit is a way down...

M.

[Bryan Betts]

Ah, true - the top (very) few back then probably were pulling £100k or more in a good year.

[Chris Wheal]

John Diamond actually did offer to down tools at the Times if we really thought it would help. I am pretty sure he said it on Fleetstreet Forum. It was a pretty short discussion because even the militant wing (me) could see it would be a pointless gesture.

Over the past dozen or so years my income has fluctuated hugely. Twice I did manage to gross close to £80,000, both times partly down to luck and a few contracts popping up that weren't mainstream journalism. The second time I had to work much harder. Actually, I had a stroke (a personal tragedy in the family coincided with my busiest period of work ever).

I'd say you have to work much harder now to earn the same amount of money - I don't just mean because of rates, but because it seems to me to take a lot longer to get information from press officers than it used to too.

I've been dedicating my time to launching my own website and phone app etc so my income has collapsed on the promise of jam tomorrow. Who dares, wins. This time next year, Rodney….. And all that.

I'd say though that basic costs of journalism are much lower now. I mean, when I started freelancing and joined this august group on Compuserve, I had an email address but none of my customers did. I had to buy discs and either post them or hand deliver them (the advantage of which was to take a handful of discs back from the feature editor's pile of unreturned ones).

Phone calls were a huge part of my costs (my 14,400 modem was state-of-the-art) as was having a fax line (remember faxes?). With mobiles - I got mine in 1993 - the total cost of telephone and internet we're several times what I now pay for umpteen mobiles, three broadband connections and three phone lines in two locations. The costs of a camera or a digital recorder or whatever have also come down.

Travel has soared, though. As have the costs outside the business, which means you actually need more profit, not less.

It's tough out there (here).

Nice to see so many familiar faces (in a non visual sense) still here.

Chris Wheal
t: +44 20 8694 9412
m: +44 7831 268261

[PJ White]

On 25/03/2013 14:17, Marc Beishon wrote:
> A good benchmark is George Monbiot, who declares all his earnings at
> http://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-interests
> - the Graun pays him about �62k a year for his column and blogs.

I see his contract with the Graun lapsed in January.

Other observation is what a relatively small divvy he gets from ALCS.
His �792.26 is less than I would have guessed, judging by what I get.
Don't think I'll bother stepping up my game if that's all the difference
it makes. Perhaps he doesn't bother filling the forms in. But he does
employ an assistant. Odd.

PJ

[Chris Wheal]

Just had an email from Martin Cloake who says he sees the forum but cannot post anything.

What does he need to do? He has one trouser leg rolled up under his apron and is giving out funny handshakes. IS that enough?

[Marc Beishon]

On Mar 25, 3:03 pm, Chris Wheal <ch...@whealassociates.com> wrote:
> Just had an email from Martin Cloake who says he sees the forum but cannot post anything.
>
> What does he need to do?

I think you have to be logged in to Google under the email address you
registered with on the groups or forum - this has caught me out as I
seem to have at least two logins.

M.

[Ryanscribe]

Quite clearly not  ;)

Me, I am surviving/busy/diversifying. Seems a common theme. My most important achievement was to be a dad to two growing boys! I joined that club a bit later than others here, I think.

On work, 'regular' money is PR (+ bit of public affairs) retainers for a variety of NGOs, campaign groups, and faith/interfaith orgs. Then I have worked on 'ghosting' a couple of autobiographies. I've also produced a book-length guide to lobbying (for a think tank), and am about to write another book-length 'guide' on another (serious) topic. Someone's just asked me to put together a workshop on crisis management, which is a new addition and I'm considering how best to structure that. Aside from that, I'm trying to develop an international documentary with a bunch of Canadians.

I don't know if I would 'recommend' this approach, but I have developed specialisms in two unusual areas: 1. The Far Right 2. British Muslims. Though most of my stuff is well behind the scenes now, not overt reporting anymore.

Hope everyone else continues to prosper.

Nick

[PJ White]

On 25/03/2013 14:28, Chris Wheal wrote:
>
> I'd say you have to work much harder now to earn the same amount of
> money - I don't just mean because of rates, but because it seems to me
> to take a lot longer to get information from press officers than it
> used to too.
>

But you could also make a long list of the ways it's quicker & easier
too, surely? Otherwise this internet thing might as well pack up and go
home.

> Phone calls were a huge part of my costs (my 14,400 modem was
> state-of-the-art) as was having a fax line (remember faxes?). With
> mobiles - I got mine in 1993 - the total cost of telephone and
> internet we're several times what I now pay for umpteen mobiles, three
> broadband connections and three phone lines in two locations. The
> costs of a camera or a digital recorder or whatever have also come down.
>

And printers. I paid �1,000 for a laser printer in 1990. Essential.
Couldn't submit copy using a dotmatrix. For one corporate client (big
name charity) I had to provide copy for checking to three different
departments. A 30-page document printed four times (copy for me) and
covering letters, printed on a machine that claimed 4 pages a minute but
didn't deliver, then packaged and queuing at the post office... Had to
schedule an afternoon at the end of the writing deadline just for admin
and keep fingers crossed for no jamming/breakdowns. Don't regret those
days are over.

PJ

[Bryan Betts]

Depends how he is reading and posting. If it's on the web, I think Marc
has it right. If it's by email, then he just needs to make sure his
postings appear to come from the address he's registered on the group
with, which is his "mac" one.

He may need to tweak his email settings, especially if he has several
addresses. Many email readers will support different outgoing addresses
on a per-folder basis. But he's certainly registered, and authorised to
post.

Marc, I can only see one registration for you, under an old CIS address.
It's possible that's also tied to your Google account, but I can 't see
that info.

Bryan

[PJ White]

On 23/03/2013 20:42, Malcolm Wheatley wrote:

PS Is it really 15 years I've been posting to you lot?  I guess so.  Congrats to all the survivors.

Likewise. Or rightbackatcha as we say now.

I just skimmed an archive of old Fleet posts. Do you remember that in Dec 1999 you were asking the forum's view about a factoring invoices deal which your bank was offering. You had the required £100k turnover - which makes you among what Bryan would call "the top (very) few back then".

Chris told you factoring wouldn't work. (He probably recommends it to everyone now....)

PJ

[Chris Wheal]

Nope. Still not convinced by factoring

Chris Wheal

+447831268261

Sent from my iPhone

[PJ White]

Great, something dependable and unchanging in this crazy, transitory world. I'll hang on to that.

[Marc Beishon]

On Mar 25, 3:22 pm, Bryan Betts <br...@journalist.co.uk> wrote:

> Depends how he is reading and posting. If it's on the web, I think Marc
> has it right. If it's by email, then he just needs to make sure his
> postings appear to come from the address he's registered on the group
> with, which is his "mac" one.

I forgot you can post by email. I take it you can't use a Usenet
client though.

> He may need to tweak his email settings, especially if he has several
> addresses. Many email readers will support different outgoing addresses
> on a per-folder basis. But he's certainly registered, and authorised to
> post.

Might be worth reminding Martin what his registered email is.

> Marc, I can only see one registration for you, under an old CIS address.
> It's possible that's also tied to your Google account, but I can 't see
> that info.

You can log into Google groups using different addresses. That's what
fooled me as I don't use quote na...@compuserve.com anymore but
na...@csi.com, which also logs me in but won't work with Fleetstreet.

M.

[Martin Cloake]

Thanks all. Just flinging this in to see if it works - it's from my Mac address, but I've been knocked back before and I'd almost given up until the group burst back into life. Still, it spared you my pearls of wisdom.

Martin Cloake
Blog: www.blog.martincloake.com
Web: www.martincloake.com
www.amazon.com/author/martincloake

[Pete Jenkins]

Back in the late nineties I was factoring invoices. And found it very useful for a number of years…

 

Pete J

[Michael Newlands]

I used a factoring service years ago when I had a small publishing company in Hong Kong. It saved my bacon because I was publishing magazines for the British and Australian Chambers of Commerce and the RSPCA and they all depended on their survival for advertising which came through agencies. As a matter of policy the bastards collected as quickly as they could from their clients and delayed paying publishers as long as they could — often up to six months. Without factoring I would have been dead.

MN

From: Chris Wheal <ch...@whealassociates.com>
Reply-To: <fleet...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, 25 March 2013 15:44
To: "fleet...@googlegroups.com" <fleet...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [FleetStreet] Digest for fleet...@googlegroups.com - 2 Messages in 1 Topic

[Chris Wheal]

My view is that it is a poor alternative to setting and policing proper terms and conditions and not kowtowing to bullying companies that do not pay on time.

If you have all those problems and accept them, it is an easy way to manage borrowing and paying someone else to do your debt collection.

Chris Wheal
t: +44 20 8694 9412
m: +44 7831 268261

[Michael Newlands]

My problem was being a small publisher being bullied by the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi, JWT and the other large multinational agencies. While I had a 30-days after publication policy, and started chasing people after 30 days, there was no legislation to support me and no leverage I could apply. Get too stroppy with them and you find all the advertising coming through that agency being pulled. My choice was to either use factoring or to lay off 10-odd staff and go back to freelancing. Tho the relief of the staff I chose factoring. You no doubt would have refused to be bullied and have chosen the freelancing option.

[Chris Wheal]

Yep. Expensive things principles.

Especially when you later realise they were the wrong principles.

Chris Wheal
t: +44 20 8694 9412
m: +44 7831 268261

[Bryan Betts]

I'm glad we sorted it out.

Bryan

[Malcolm_W]

Yes: I remember the £100K years. Workload these days is much lower,
but quality of life higher. Strategy now is to stay just below the
higher-rate tax band.

Never did get round to factoring, and now it's academic -- some
regular gigs provide a more even cash flow, plus I've rigorously
focused on outlets that pay predictably.

But undoubtedly (like others here), I'm doing more corporate work.
The Internet has been a boon, here. Organisations that would formerly
never publish anything now have a website, with a hungry blog and case
study section to feed. Thank goodness!

Malcolm