Post: Hanging Stringers By A Rope

The Washington City Paper writes up an interesting piece about how the Washington Post treats their freelancers. Your life is nothing but deadline stress. You never know when your pieces will run. Your pay is bad--the average music review pays $100--and the play is worse--try Page C7. And don't even think of complaining to the Newspaper Guild--you're as expendable as they come. The story begins by detailing the saga of Style contributor Tricia Olszewski, who was taken off the Post's theater beat this month for comments she made on her personal website...comments suggesting that the "theatah" scene in DC was "snooty." Not that Olszewski should have known she was breaking the rules. Post freelancers receive no documentation detailing where the boundaries lay. So, to help navigate this ethical minefield, Dept. of Media offers Post contributors (who include numerous City Paper staffers and freelancers) this easy-to-follow guide to holding on to your lousy gig. You can read their "guide" on your own. It's got a few interesting stories about freelancers and their experiences with the Post, and yes, they're probably right: the Post should give out guidelines to their freelancers. But the examples listed sound more like the everyday bumps and grinds that any newspaper has to deal with and is hardly the incrimination of the paper that authors Mike DeBonis and Jason Cherkis were probably aiming for. A few questions that stick out to us: 1.) Did Olszewski inform her editors that she even had a blog? 2.) Is the Post really to be blamed for asking someone to stop covering a particular beat (Olszewski still writes music reviews for the paper) when it's discovered that said person actually has a high dose of disdain for it? Would/should Dana Milbank stay on his beat if he wrote on a blog that "this whole politics thing is really just full of dorks and nerds." Or if Robin Givhan confessed on her blog that "my uptight, pretentious reviews of the ridiculously lame fashion scene here in DC can be read at washingtonpost.com." 3.) One of their "incriminating" examples occured in...1978? That's sort of a reach, no? (Conventiently for the City Paper, both Olszewski (and Trey Graham, whose blog first broke Olszewski's firing, also contribute to the City Paper. So this piece of journalism is a nice way for them to stick it to the Post and claim, "We treat our freelancers better than the Post.")

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Post: Hanging Stringers By A Rope

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