I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.
I’m tired of seeing student photographers/journalists getting ripped off and taken advantage of.
I’m tired of knowing that companies — big and small — and individual clients think they can offer us little to no pay or, even better, “exposure” and a credit line in exchange for our hard work.
I’m tired of seeing fellow (photo)journalists willingly give up their work for little to no pay and/or not realize they should charge for their work.
I attribute my fury to two incidents/events in the past week: First, a large company’s trying to take advantage of another photographer and me, and second, a Twitter debate over content farms.
How a big-time company tried to rip me off
Almost two years ago, Esten, some other friends and I hopped in a car and drove 1200 miles roundtrip to Mangum, Okla., for the Mangum Rattlesnake Derby. For three days in this annual event, rattlesnake hunters comb through the nearby hills in search of rattlesnakes, which are brought back to town and butchered. We were there purely for the novelty of it all — and to photograph it, of course.
About a week ago, a representative with a very well-known travel guidebook company sent me the following message via Flickr Mail:
Hi Chris,
We produce and distribute one of the Web’s most popular travel guide products and have selected the Mangum Rattlesnake Derby to be included in the guide.
We are in the process of enhancing our listing with photos and would like to request an image from you (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_dunn/2458007330/) that can be used alongside the description of the event.
The image will appear alongside our editorial review of the Mangum Rattlesnake Derby and will go live on http://www.whatsonwhen.com, http://www.frommers.com and selected partner sites, reaching around 5 million unique users a month and generating 30 million page views.
We are able to give editorial with an accompanying image a more prominent slot on our websites, meaning we can bring your image to the attention of a wider online audience.Of course we will put the appropriate credit and/or copyright information that you specify next to the image. We are not able to include links or URLs in the credit, but we can put your Flickr username if you wish, e.g. Photo by christhedunn (flickr), or your real name should you wish.
Many thanks for your assistance in producing a great online travel guide.
Outraged? I was, a little. Especially because one of my images would function as promotional material in multiple media and multiple publications, I was aghast that there had been absolutely no mention of payment. Apparently, “bring[ing] [my] image to the attention of a wider online audience” is supposed to be sufficient compensation.
After consulting with Matt and Jeff, I sent the representative the following message:
Thank you for contacting me about using my photo. I will gladly license the photo for your specified usage for a period of one year effective the first date of publication. The photo may be published in your partner Web sites and your travel guide but cannot be resold or repurposed without my explicit permission. My fee for this license will be $500.
Please let me know if you accept these terms or if you have any questions. Thanks again for contacting me.
The next day, I received this message:
Hi Chris,
Thank you for your reply but I’m afraid we won’t be accepting your offer.
Thanks — but that wasn’t an offer. Those were my terms. And if my price seems high to anyone out there, take this into consideration: How much would Frommer’s have to pay to send a photographer to the derby, including travel expenses? The answer is, “A lot more than $500.” Additionally, with the amount of play and display the photo and editorial review would receive on Frommer’s partner Web sites and publications, Jeff and I agreed that asking for anything less than $250 or $300 would be severely undervaluing myself.
The same day, Frommer’s sent Esten a similar message, wherein use of his photo was requested and payment or other monetary compensation was not mentioned. Esten, Jeff and I discussed the issue before Esten offered his image for use with the following message:
Thanks so much for the email! As this trip took a good deal of planning, money and resources to complete, I cannot just license the photo for a credit only. If you’d like, I will allow use of the photo for the website and partner publications for $150. Because I have already sold prints of the photo, I understand it to have value, especially with the level of visibility you claim. If you’d like, that price is open to negotiation; however, I will not release the photo for use without compensation. If you are looking for royalty free images, Flickr can search for photos listed under the Creative Commons – Attribution license.
To this day, Frommer’s has not responded to Esten’s message.
This much is clear, based on Esten’s and my experience: Frommer’s is trolling around and trying to take advantage of all the amateur photographers on Flickr by offering to put their byline on their Web sites — but not offering any kind of monetary compensation. And the worst part is, they’re not the only ones trying to get away with ripping photographers off. At least Frommer’s had the professional courtesy to contact us, instead of simply taking our photos without our knowledge or permission.
Tweeting about content farms
The Twitter discussion about content farms began with Kelsey‘s attendance at a Columbia Missourian budget meeting where, for reasons I still don’t know, representatives with AOL were addressing the student reporters and pitching assignments at $50 pay per article for SEED.
- @KelseyProud: In a very interesting budget meeting at the Missourian listening to officials from AOL talk about seed.com….hrm…. Freelancing?
- @KelseyProud: Aol asking seed.com contributors to interview all 2,000 bands at #sxsw for $50/profile. Students are salivating.
Then Erica, Jeff, Jen Reeves and I jumped in. Here’s the full Twitter discussion, in the best chronological/sensible order that I can manage:
- @ericazucco: @kelseyproud Jealous, I have class. Quasi-live tweet, please?
- @KelseyProud: @ericazucco working on it!
- @KelseyProud: Aol saying they’re concerned with verification…. Trying lots of different ways to fact-check but are going to make mistakes #aolmo
- @KelseyProud: Question asked: is seed.com bus. Model dangerous to @Aol staff writers? Answer: no because market bigger than demand
- @KelseyProud: Will the seed.com content be the creator’s property? A: many diff. Models but at first no. Aol owns all rights. #aolmo
- @ericazucco: @kelseyproud So do all interested writers submit content and they choose the best?
- @KelseyProud: @ericazucco ill ask!
- @ericazucco: @kelseyproud So do all interested writers submit content and they choose the best?
- @jefflphoto: @KelseyProud Sounds like a really messy work-for-hire deal with terrible rates and potential for sub-par content. We need this because…?
- @KelseyProud: @jefflphoto my thoughts exactly jeff. We in the room are also wondering why they’re bringing this to a newsroom…
- @ericazucco: @kelseyproud @jefflphoto Def. get your point, but I’ll take $25 for writing an article on how to make soap, as a college student!
- @jefflphoto: @ericazucco Well I wouldn’t take $25 to take a photo of soap making (or anything) and give AOL a worldwide exclusive license to my photos.
- @ericazucco: @jefflphoto Yeah, I get you. It basically sounds like the same thing Demand Studios & similar companies/content farms do.
- @KelseyProud: @ericazucco right….might be nice for a quick buck.
- @jefflphoto: @ericazucco Well I wouldn’t take $25 to take a photo of soap making (or anything) and give AOL a worldwide exclusive license to my photos.
- @christhedunn (me): @ericazucco The problem is in companies’ thinking they can get away with underpaying college students. We can’t undervalue ourselves. (1/2)
- @christhedunn: @ericazucco If this is going to be our eventual career, we need to charge appropriate rates now or we’ll just undercut ourselves. (2/2)
- @ericazucco: @christhedunn I agree, & you have to weigh everything with its value to you (we could get into a whole convo about unpaid internships) (1/2)
- @ericazucco: @christhedunn but I don’t see something like seed.com as a way to advance myself journalistically so much as what @kelseyproud said- quick $
- @christhedunn: @ericazucco I agree it’s good for some quick petty cash, but it also encourages those kinds of companies to continue milking students. (1/2)
- @christhedunn: @ericazucco Companies, big and small, troll Flickr/campuses/etc. to avoid paying the pros whom we want to become. We can’t allow this. (2/2)
- @christhedunn: @ericazucco I’m not trying to bully-pulpit, but I was recently approached by a big company trying to take advantage of my “amateur” status.
- @ericazucco: @christhedunn Won’t disagree with you there. But I think the bigger problem is sub-par content farms in general surpassing reputable (1/2)
- @ericazucco: @christhedunn sources in SEO. I guess newsrooms have to find own sol’ns and consumers have to just search smart
- @christhedunn: @ericazucco True. That’s an area we can’t fight/overcome, for now. But individually and as journos, we can refuse to feed the content farms.
- @ericazucco: @christhedunn I think that’s the strongest argument for not participating, fr a journo POV. & you see those kinds of choices in ev. industry
- @christhedunn: @ericazucco True. That’s an area we can’t fight/overcome, for now. But individually and as journos, we can refuse to feed the content farms.
- @jenleereeves: @christhedunn @ericazucco @kelseyproud Love the conversation. Seed isn’t the first. Have you seen @allvoices?
- @ericazucco: @jenleereeves There seem to be a lot with this bus. model…just interesting (but not surprising) to see AOL jumpin gin so late in the game
- @christhedunn: @jenleereeves Hadn’t heard of @allvoices, but just looked at it. Sickened. This is helping kill our industry and professional standards.
- @jenleereeves: @christhedunn I totally agree with your concerns. Huffington Post isn’t much different. Most people work for free just to get the extra eyes
What is seed.com, anyway?
According to its “about” page, “SEED assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL’s properties: more than 80 of the Web’s most highly trafficked and respected websites.” Its page for photographers says, “SEED is an open content submission platform from AOL that is looking for professionals like you to answer the call for timely photography assignments about current topics that the Internet needs.”
Um… right.
The bottom line
It seems pretty clear to me that a lot of companies and individual clients think that offering petty cash or, worse, a mere byline (“exposure”) in exchange for the hard work and efforts by student journalists and “amateurs” is completely okay. It also seems pretty clear that this horrendous method works, because otherwise these people would know by now that their approach is unprofessional, demeaning and generally unacceptable.
Fellow student journalists, the future of journalism and our careers are already in tremendous flux and not as financially stable as in the past. Fellow photographers, selling licenses to our copyrighted photos is one of the ways we put bread on the table and stay alive.
If we give our work away for pennies, for free or for “exposure,” we’re doing ourselves the worst disservice possible.
Companies and clients need to learn that they must pay us — and pay us suitably — for our hard work and efforts. They have to know that they can’t get away with making huge profits off our articles and photos that they either steal or buy at an absurdly low price. If we want to take any pride in our quality products, we have to stop underselling ourselves and start valuing and pricing our work appropriately.
I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. Are you?
[For further reading about how journalists are exploited and how they can take action to prevent further ridiculousness, here is an excellent blog post by Alan Mutter. It seems like his anger and frustration with the situation are equal to mine, and he’s done well in succinctly and strongly making his points. It’s a must-read for especially free-lancing journalists.]
Words and Light 
true, but i cant see it ever changing.
oh look its my window and its two in the morning 😀
Hi Chris.
Saul Hansell here. I visited your newsroom last week. I’m sorry to hear your concerns about Seed. Skepticism, of course, is a key tool for a journalist. I’ve had to suspend my own cultivated sense of doubt in order to have the optimism needed to work in my current role, trying to build something exciting.
I do believe that there are going to be ways to use a distributed workforce to make sites that are of high quality and are interesting and useful to people. I don’t think that disappointing people with bait-and-switch search optimized “content” is a viable long term strategy, and that’s certainly not what we are trying to do.
As for the pay, I’m not trying to exploit anyone. But if the revenue available from a given article is only a certain amount, we can’t really pay more than that for someone to write it. Blame the world’s users who have decided to spread their attention across so many different topics that they money to be made from each article is far lower than in the days of paper.
In any case, I’m not asking you to lessen your skepticism. But I am asking you to keep an open mind, and watch what we do to see whether it is good for readers and good for writers and photographers.
Best
Saul
Hi Saul —
Thanks for checking this out. Sorry if I came across as making an example of your company — it wasn’t my intent to point fingers only at Seed.
I have little doubt that readers appreciate what you and your coworkers do. As a working photographer, though, I have to question whether writers and fellow photographers will truly benefit from contributing. I understand that revenue is limited, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable in my own skin with asking anyone, including a student, to take $50 to report on something for which hiring a professional writer or commissioning a free-lance journalist would cost much more, plus any travel expenses.
Your concern is with running a business that produces content and stays out of the red. My concern is with maintaining high standards and professional and personal dignity and ensuring that (photo)journalists realize they’re only undercutting themselves and further weakening our profession when they accept less compensation than they should. I don’t see these concerns coinciding or being in agreement now, but I can only hope that that will happen in the future — and the sooner, the better for everyone.
Thanks again for writing. I’ll keep an open mind, but I’m holding onto my skepticism.
The question at this point is really the quality of content you’re getting for $50. If I was already going to SXSW, I’d do it to help cover my own expenses for the trip. It’s a cost/benefit kind of deal. It doesn’t cost me anything to go and talk to a band, and it defrays my cost to get there (which, in my example, I’m already doing anyway). For $50 and no additional cost to me, I’ll write a profile on any crappy band you throw at me. It may not (okay, certainly won’t) be as good as if you hire Chuck Klosterman to do it, but that’s what you get for $50.
Now, there is no way in hell I’d spend a few hundred dollars in gas money to go down to SXSW just for the $50 and the byline. Not worth it at all. My problem isn’t really people accepting very little cash to do marginal work (which is what this’d be), but people giving their work away JUST for the byline. That’s when I get angry. Honestly, a byline isn’t worth the effort I put into making the photo or writing the story unless it’s at a major newspaper/magazine/etc and I’m working there as some sort of unpaid intern. Then it MIGHT be justified (I still have a problem with it, but less of one). If you don’t have the budget to pay a lot, that’s one thing. But saying the work is essentially without value is another entirely. Expecting handouts is insulting. Having limited resources is understandable.
Mr. Hansell–
Chris will be graduating with a bachelor’s degree in May. If she, like many other graduating students, decides to work for herself instead of getting a staff photographer job at a newspaper, how can she expect to support herself, let alone a family, on a byline?
I do understand companies struggle to pay their contributing writers and photographers.
But I more fully understand photojournalists’ struggles to put food on their tables and roof over their heads.
It puts us in a pickle, but we’d rather not feel like our work is only worth a byline. Especially when we spent tens of thousands of dollars on an education to further develop our skills.
Tens of thousands of dollars on education, PLUS thousands of dollars invested in photo equipment, editing software, computers and hard drives for archiving. Photojournalism especially has a high entry cost for which we don’t get compensated for quite a while.
You did the right thing. I had a similar Flickr experience about a year ago. A reputable company asked to use a photo for credit only. I replied that I would need payment, not so much for the money, as their intended use wouldn’t have warranted much, but to attach value to the work. To give it away for free would imply that it might be worthless.
They dutifully found the standard rate for their planned use and sent me a check for that amount. Then it got weird.
I was e-mailed by same person I had been dealing with asking to return the check. He said an executive had seen the web page it was to be used on and decided my picture wasn’t appropriate for that situation.
Because it was a fairly high profile non-profit, I destroyed the check.
What I learned from this was to stand by what I believe to be right, that my work had value and be prepared to simply say “no, thank you”.
Good luck with your photography.
L
The problem here, though, is that you’re a student content-producer, not a professional. To say you should be paid high commissions for your work before you have a degree, it seems to me, is to say that a degree shouldn’t have value.
Ultimately, content production, sale, and distribution is a business and is driven by the market. As long as there is someone who is willing to do similar work for free, your content doesn’t have any market value.
Adam
http://adambsullivan.wordpress.com
Hi Adam —
Thanks for posting. I’m sorry I didn’t approve your comment until now — for some reason, your comment went into the “spam” folder, which I didn’t check until a few minutes ago.
I understand your point, but I disagree. If a student’s quality of work, diligence, efficiency and overall professionalism are the equivalent of a professional’s, the student doesn’t deserve to earn any less simply because he/she hasn’t yet completed his/her degree.
Of perhaps equal importance is the fact that I have paid tens of thousands of dollars toward acquiring my degree — which I will earn in May — and have exerted an incredible effort toward ensuring that I’ve gotten the most out of that degree. I’m not saying that a photographer with a degree is inherently better than a photographer without a degree, but I know I’ve learned much from my coursework and internships, and would be able to apply those acquired skills and know-how to whatever assignments I handle.
But again — quality work is quality work. If a student has worked just as hard on an assignment or turned out the same quality of work as a professional would, the student deserves no less just because of his/her status as a student.
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