WordRates, the first tier of the project, will provide a Yelp-esque database of user-submitted ratings of editors, publications and boilerplate contracts, along with contact information for editors. The second part of the project, PitchLab, is modeled after the book publishing industry. It will employ mentors to workshop pitches with journalists and help shop them around to multiple publications in order to get the best rate and contract.

For freelancers frustrated with stagnant rates and the lack of transparency in the publishing industry, WordRates and PitchLabs are exciting opportunities to level the playing field (which we previously covered in a guest post published in Fast Company). To get more detail, we chatted with Carney about the history of the project, freelancers’ bad pitching habits and how editors are responding to WordRates and PitchLab so far.

Q & A

What has changed about the project since its initial conception?

Scott Carney: The idea is pretty similar to what I’ve always had. We were always going to have Yelp-for-editors built, and we were always going to pair people up with mentors — people who have been freelancing for a long time, usually very established folks, to sort of become literary agents for magazine writers.

We figured — instead of pitching directly to a magazine — you’d pitch us, and we’d have one of our people pitch it to eight magazines at once, and try to get the best possible deal. It’d likely be someone who writes for the New Yorker or New York Times Magazine regularly.

The idea is that even if we charge a commission, we’re going to be able to get more money and better terms. It’s the same model that works for book publishing. There’s no real difference to it, except that our mentors are not professional agents; they’re journalists.
Why would a magazine want to get a pitch from a mentor rather than the journalist?

Photo by Heinrich Böll Stiftung and used here with Creative Commons license.

Carney: Two reasons. One is that we’re basically going through a slush pile. We’ll have a bunch of pitches that we’ll look over, and we’ll be representing the best ones from that. You’ll have a higher quality just because of that process.

But also, if we have a great idea, and the only way for the magazine to get that idea is to go through us, they don’t really have that much of a choice.
And what’s the commission going to be for people who sign up for PitchLab?

Carney: Fifteen percent. That’s industry standard.

I recently pitched two different sites the same topic. One of them definitely wanted it, and the other asked for more information. I ended up not giving them more information because I went to the first site. They changed their mind sometime before I submitted it, and by then it was no longer timely and the other site didn’t want it anymore. Is this the type of thing PitchLab could help prevent?

Carney: That’s the whole point. I wrote a blog post on market pitching versus silo pitching, and the thing is that our stories go bad. Your pitches can go bad because of timeliness.

If you’re only pitching one person at a time, you’re effectively putting yourself in the worst possible negotiating position. By the time you’ve gotten the green light, your pitch is often eight times more stale than it used to be. Then you’re really stuck if you only have one offer. But if you have two offers on the table, now you have power.

Screenshot courtesy of Wordrates.com

Screenshot courtesy of Wordrates.com

I think editors still think that people pitch one publication or site at a time.

Carney: A lot of them even prefer that. They’ll tell you that they only accept ideas that are one at a time. But unless they have a contract with you saying that, then what they’re doing is very anti-competitive. It might even be illegal, because basically what they’re saying is they need exclusivity and you’re not going to get anything back for it. It’s a very bad practice.

Say somebody keeps sending crappy pitches to PitchLab. Are they going to be getting feedback? What is that process going to look like?

Carney: I don’t have a direct answer for that, but it’s not a service where anyone can just submit crap, and we’re going to edit it and make it awesome.

We’re looking for the diamonds in the rough. I assume that we’re going to be very selective, and most people’s pitches that get sent in are going to be rejected, just because there’s a volume of ideas out there, and we’re only going to represent the ones that we think we can turn into big money.
So if somebody sends a pitch that isn’t that great, are they going to know that it isn’t getting sent on to editors? Are they going to get any feedback?

Yeah. When someone submits their idea, they’re going to get an automatic message saying that it’s under review. The mentors will have a list of pitches in a database, and they can approve a story and take it on and represent it, they can pass on it, they can delete it in the database. When it gets rejected, a writer will get a letter saying, “Sorry, we can’t represent it.” And if it gets accepted then they’ll work with that person.
When you first started sharing rates through a Google Doc there was a big backlash from editors, correct?

There was some sabotage on the Google Doc where people erased things, but then I just locked it.

One editor did contact me and said, “It’s not cool that you’re posting our rate,” but I’ve also had editors write me and say, “We can’t wait for WordRates and PitchLab, particularly PitchLab, to come out.” And I’ve also had magazine editors add their own magazines to the rate list, so it’s sort of a variety of reactions.

So it’s not like you’re pissing off all the editors, just a select few.

Carney: The thing is that we’re not against editors at all. Editors are great. They make your work better. But we are very strongly against the business practices that make it impossible for freelancers to make a living, and that ultimately sits with the people who manage those publications.

But I think some people are happy to get paid less than $2/word, especially for websites.
Could be, but here’s the thing: Writers often think that their work isn’t worth anything — they don’t know how to value their work.

Carney: If they’re working for a company that’s valued at $100 million — and they pay their writers less than half a percent of their revenues — you’re getting screwed, even if you feel personally that it’s an okay rate. When I write for Wired and I get $2.50 a word, or whatever my rate is right now, if they sell one single page advertisement to go with the story — one page of advertising is worth $140,000 at Wired. My story may be 10 pages. They do not give me a million dollars.

What about websites?

Carney: Websites should be paying a lot more. You have to look at the revenue their web traffic generates and what their actual business model is based on. If you look at the book publishing industry — I’ve written two books, and I just got my third book contract — they give you about 10 percent as a royalty of the book sales, 10 percent of the gross.

If any of these magazines paid you 10 percent percent of their gross, we would be getting a standard rate of $20/word [Editor’s note: You can check out Carney’s calculations here]. Websites I’m sure would be paying at least a dollar a word, more than likely three or four dollars a word if you were making 10 percent of the gross.

The thing is that writers just don’t fight it, and we think we’re valueless.

If someone wasn’t a backer and is just finding out about the project, is there a way they can get involved?

Carney: Once the site goes live then people can sign up for a free account and start rating editors and doing all the stuff the site was built for. They can submit pitches, and we’ll review them at our launch.

Is there anything else about this project people should know about?

Carney: I think that people really need to understand that writers’ work is valuable, and that fighting for the value of your work is not against your interests.

PitchLab may be the way this will happen, but even if nobody uses PitchLab, I hope people take the message from this project that you’re supposed to argue for every contract that you get — then I’ll have won. Because we need to put pressure on magazines and realize that writing is a business. It’s not some art form where it’s not tied to your own survival.

This post originally appeared on Contently.

An investigative journalist at heart, Yael writes about world-changing tech startups, online privacy, and cutting-edge fitness research. She covers controversies and movements with nuance and depth.

The post Can WordRates, PitchLab Flip the Script for Freelancers vs. Publishers? appeared first on MediaShift.

The free weekly paper that paid me pennies to blog about food after it fired its full-time food writer clearly didn’t have the staff to moderate comments. Whenever I’d give a restaurant a good review, I’d get to sift through weird conspiracy theories about how I was secretly coerced into saying nice things because of some kind of advertising deal that didn’t actually exist. I always felt slightly betrayed that these sites hung us writers out to dry by not moderating at all. I rarely responded, though I was tempted to create fake accounts to argue with readers about how I was right. I always wondered if the wrath of commenters would taint how editors viewed my work.

Photo by Jeroen Bennink and reused here with Creative Commons license.

I was a ghostwriter for a couple of large health websites, always surprised at how the people I ghosted for reacted to the comments. They’d expect rewrites and revisions over minor nitpicks, even if the commenter was wrong.

Sites have wildly different opinions on whether journalists should engage with readers. Some sites don’t seem to pay attention, while others — such as MindHut and SparkLife — even go so far as rewarding writers who get a certain amount of upvotes when responding to comments.

I won’t deny feeling a little bit of relief when I find out a site I write for has no comments section, but I’ll also admit that my opinion on comments has shifted over the years. Not only do I read the comments on most of the sites I write for, I also respond to clarify information. I’m confident enough in my writing that I’m often capable of pulling out the actual argument in a comment while ignoring the parts meant to bait me. Sometimes that means I’m telling people to read a paragraph or section they missed, but other times I actually learn something that guides future reporting; if a section is unclear to multiple readers, that may prompt me to define my terms in more detail in a future post.

I find that a small but significant percentage of those vitriolic comments come from experts in their fields. Many are writers themselves. Learning not to take comments personally isn’t easy for me, but putting my ego aside has been rewarding.

Hanging out in the comments section also helps me direct people to other articles that have supplementary information. That step is important to me because editors can strip my links or ask me to link to a summary article, rather an original study or report that’s a bit too technical for most of our readers (or requires them to sign in).

But not all freelancers feel the same way about comments. Your personal temperament, the topics you write about, the sites you write for, the level of engagement of those sites, and your schedule are just a few factors that could affect whether you read and respond to the chatter on your pieces. To get a glimpse of some varied viewpoints, I reached out to four writers for their perspectives.

Ignoring most comments

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a staff writer at Vice who covers hacking, information security and digital rights for Motherboard, isn’t big on comments. “To be honest, I’ve never really paid too much attention to comments, because I grew up thinking that they’re not very useful,” he said. “I grew up with the assumption that comments were never very useful, so when I became a journalist I never really paid attention to them.”

That’s not to say that he avoids the comments entirely — he occasionally scrolls down and reads a few here and there. But because he never felt that comments were a way for him to directly engage with writers, nothing has happened that would change that mindset.

Franceschi-Bicchierai does spend a lot of time responding to comments on Twitter, though, so readers can reach out to him there. And while he’s heard from fellow reporters that story ideas are often born in the comments, he’s still not quite convinced. “I wonder what the ratio is between the time you spend reading useless comments and how many of those are useful and get you a story idea,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

MediaShift stock photo.

Tracking the first 24 hours

Cyrus Farivar, senior business editor at Ars Technica, doesn’t read all of the comments, but he does skim through them during the first 24 hours after a post goes live. He’s looking for readers to point out errors, be it missing commas, typos or information that’s incorrect. “I’d like to know about those sooner rather than later so the story can be corrected and made as accurate as possible,” he added.

Ars Technica not only has prolific commenters, there’s also a forum that discusses the posts in more detail, but Farivar told me he doesn’t have time to participate in those discussions due to time constraints. “Leaving a comment on an article is a really bad way to get my attention,” he said.

People can email or tweet him to reach out directly.

It depends

Maryn McKenna, a journalist and author who specializes in public health, global health and food policy, believes the culture of the site you work for is crucial when determining whether or not to engage with comments.

“When I was writing at Wired, my readers didn’t leave a lot of comments, and engaging the commenters in the comments didn’t seem to make a difference to my pageviews,” she said. “Most of my interaction with my readers took place on Twitter. At National Geographic, I have much more active commenters, and they expect interaction and replies, so I am engaging with them more than I did before.”

MediaShift stock photo

McKenna enjoys interacting with commenters who recommend papers for her to read or new areas of research, but she doesn’t have the time to “engage to the point of encouraging conversation between commenters (though they may undertake that on their own).” And she is a fairly strict moderator: “[I] won’t allow people to insult or flame or post things that are demonstrably incorrect.”

As she wrote to me over email: “That’s in part because allowing that sort of commentary doesn’t lean toward the kind of community I want on my page, and also because correcting people in-comment with cites to the accurate literature takes more time than I can spare.”

Looking to engage

Monica Guzman, a tech and media columnist at GeekWire, The Daily Beast and the Columbia Journalism Review, believes that writers should respond to any smart comments. “It shows you’re listening, which improves the conversation,’ she said. “Plus it encourages civil conversation over time and connects more deeply with people who are taking the time to engage with your story.”

However, that policy comes with two caveats: “Only respond to the thoughtful comments, and respond with gratitude.”

So what’s the bottom line? Led the situation guide you. The amount of extra time you have in your workday, the quality of the comments on sites you write for and your own personal preference will help you determine how much time you should spend in the comments.

Just don’t waste a lot of time interacting with trolls. Whether I asked four writers or 400 hundred writers, I think that’s something just about all writers can agree on.

This post originally appeared on Contently.

An investigative journalist at heart, Yael writes about world-changing tech startups, online privacy, and cutting-edge fitness research. She covers controversies and movements with nuance and depth.

The post Should Writers Respond to Comments on Their Articles? appeared first on MediaShift.

It’s the new year, and you’ve just taken a long, hard look at your goals for the coming year. Get more work? Check. Learn new skills? Check. Make more money? Check. The thing is, all of these goals are predicated on meeting the right people who can help your career improve.

Writing conferences are certainly a great way to network and get a change of scenery for those of us who are used to communicating with people by email or phone. So pull out your calendar, check out our roundup below, and figure out which of these conferences will help you meet your goals for 2015 — and beyond.

1. 2015 COMPUTER ASSISTED REPORTING CONFERENCE

Dates: March 5–8
Location: Atlanta, GA
Cost: $250 by February 6, $280 by March 3, or $310 on-site, plus a $70 fee for an Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) membership. Students pay $100 plus $25 for membership.
Why you should go: If you want to use more data in your stories but keep hitting walls, this conference will help you learn how to use spreadsheets, databases, and online maps and improve your data visualization and data science skills. Through panel discussions and hands-on training sessions, you’ll get to dig deep into design issues, data journalism, online security, and more. Classes can get geeky depending on your drug of choice: Google forms, Django, SQL, Excel, Access, Tableau, Unix, Python, etc.

2. BINDERCON

Dates: March 28–29
Location: Los Angeles, CA (and online)
Cost: $125 early-bird available now, which will presumably increase to more than $150. Or, you can pay $300 for your own ticket and a scholarship.
Why you should go: Out of the Binders was formed to promote the voices of women and gender non-conforming writers, and the community surrounding the conference is incredibly welcoming and diverse. The symposium will include panels on cultivating your career and improving your craft, but also diversity and intersectionality — topics that usually aren’t covered in a meaningful way at many other events.

3. SOCIETY OF AMERICAN BUSINESS EDITORS AND WRITERS SPRING CONFERENCE

Dates: April 23–25
Location: Chicago, IL
Cost: Before March 25, members pay $299 and non-members pay $349. After that, rates increase to $349 for members and $399 for non-members. Students pay $125. Group rates are available.
Why you should go: If you’re a business reporter, the SABEW conference has a lot to offer. The lineup of speakers is stacked — Rahm Emanuel, anyone? — and you’ll learn strategies for evaluating startups and entrepreneurs, covering business in a global economy, and enhancing your reporting with cutting edge technology.

4. ASSOCIATION OF HEALTH CARE JOURNALISTS HEALTH JOURNALISM 2015

Dates: April 23–26
Location: Santa Clara, CA
Cost: $175 before March 6, $200 after March 6, and $225 on-site for members. Students receive $60 discounts, and some fellowships are available. Public information officers and PR reps pay anywhere from $325 to $800.
Why you should go: Aside from being a very affordable conference, AHCJ is a treasure trove of medical expertise. If you’re on the science, health, or medical beat, you’ll likely leave with an improved understanding of health policy, medical research, and clinical medicine. The conference also includes optional field trips to research or health-related facilities as well as a freelance pitch fest for you to interact with editors directly, speed-dating style. Speaking this year is Abraham Verghese, a Stanford University physician and bestselling author.

5. AMERICAN SOCIETY OF JOURNALISTS AND AUTHORS CONNECT FOR SUCCESS

Dates: April 30–May 2
Location: New York, NY
Cost: Not set, but 2014’s early-bird conference fees were between $462 and $582 for members, including a members-only day on Thursday. Non-members paid anywhere from $358 to $438, depending on when they registered. Students got in for $200. Single day registrations were also available.
Why you should go: If you’ve ever felt left out at a journalism conference since you weren’t on staff at a major publication, you’ll feel more at home at ASJA, where you’ll be surrounded by fellow freelancers. This conference contains tons of panels and sessions on business management, marketing, and writing and research techniques. And since it’s smack dab in New York City, the conference gets high-profile panelists from just about every beat. ASJA members get access to personal pitch sessions, where you can have speed-dating style meetings with publishers, agents, and even a handful of editors, so this conference is potentially lucrative in addition to being informative. Author Jennifer Boylan is speaking this year.

6. MUSE & THE MARKETPLACE

Dates: May 1–3
Location: Boston, MA
Cost: Not set, but last year was $465 for members and $495 for non-members.
Why you should go: This three-day literary conference helps writers find that elusive balance between artistic excellence and working for money. Authors delve into the craft of writing, while agents, publicists, and editors talk business. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?

7. NORTH AMERICAN TRAVEL JOURNALIST ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE AND MARKETPLACE

Dates: May 4–9
Location: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Cost: $449 for members and $629 for non-members (including membership) before January 31. Non-media members pay $779. Hotel expenses and meals are included.
Why you should go: Complementary airfare is available for members (but not companions), pre- and post-conference media tours are included with the registration fee, and your meals, lodging and transportation are provided by the host destination. You’ll have professional development seminars in the morning and a marketplace to meet with exhibitors and hear their destination promotion spiels. In the afternoons, you’ll be drinking cocktails, taking tours, and catching dinner, and listening to an evening keynote speakers. (A tentative conference schedule has been posted.) If you’re a travel writer who’s okay with the ethical issues of accepting freebies — and have your editor’s blessings — the North American Travel Journalists Association Spring Conference looks like a fun excuse for vacation.

8. TRAVEL CLASSICS EAST

Dates: May 28–31
Location: Tarrytown, NY
Cost: $750
Why you should go: This conference is open to writers who have published three or more major magazine articles within the last year and a half. Like the NATJA conference, it includes meals as well as pre- and post-conference media tours. You’ll also get to sit in on presentations by top magazine editors and book agents and consult with them one-on-one.

9. 2015 INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS AND EDITORS CONFERENCE

Dates: June 4–7
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Cost: $250 by May 8, $280 by June 2 , or $310 on-site, plus a $70 fee for a one-year IRE membership. Students pay $100 student plus $25 for membership.
Why you should go: Investigative journalism ain’t easy, but this conference provides guidance on locating documents, accessing public records, finding stories, and managing investigations. Although the schedule hasn’t been posted, the conference promises to cover a wide variety of beats, including public safety, health care, government, military, business, education, and the environment.

10. OUTDOOR WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA SPRING CONFERENCE

Dates: June 15–16
Location: Big Bear Lake, CA
Cost: $142 for members and $192 for supporting members. Lodging is included.
Why you should go: If you like to work hard and play hard, this conference will give you a chance to get some fishing and off-roading in while working on improving your craft, gathering story ideas, and networking with other outdoor writers.

11. MAYBORN LITERARY NONFICTION CONFERENCE

Dates: July 17–19
Location: Grapevine, TX
Cost: $374 before May 1, $425 after May 1. Educators pay $354, and students pay $324.
Why you should go: Prepare to be inspired by world-renowned storytellers in a series of lectures, panels, and one-on-one sessions. Keynote speakers this year include authors Anne Fadiman, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Alex Tizon. If that’s not enough, former New York Times editor-in-chief Jill Abramson is one of 18 featured speakers—with more to be announced. The overarching conference theme? “The great divide between the Haves and Have-Nots in American society and the social, economic, racial, cultural and political fissures created by this divide.”

12. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR BLACK JOURNALISTS 2015 CONVENTION AND CAREER FAIR

Dates: August 5–9
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Cost: Early bird tickets purchased by March 15 cost $325 for full and emeritus-retired members and associate members, $225 for student members, $275 for NABJ and affiliate chapter members, $550 for non-members, and $310 for non-member students.
For those who register between March 15 and June 15, rates jump to $380 for full and emeritus-retired members and associate members and $275 for student members.
On-site registration is $550 for full and emeritus-retired members or associate members, $300 for student members, $600 for non-members, and $350 for non-member students. Daily rates are also available.
Why you should go: NABJ, the largest organization of journalists of color in the nation, has been hosting these conventions since 1975. The workshop and program topics are phenomenal, and includes sessions ranging from covering the aftermaths of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, covering Ebola in West Africa, female sports journalism, entrepreneurial journalism, building sources and contacts, how the increased digital presence impacts the black press, and more. The convention also includes a pitch fest when freelancers can bring story ideas to science and health editors.

13. 25TH ANNUAL ASIAN AMERICAN JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION NATIONAL CONVENTION

Dates: August 12–15
Location: San Francisco, CA
Cost: $250 for members and $375 for non-members who register by April 12; $325 for members and $450 for non-members who register by June 14. And $400 for members or $525 for non-members who register on-site. Student members pay $100 by April 12, $150 by June 14, or $200 on-site.
Why you should go: AAJA’s four-day convention is stacked with panels, workshops, lightning talks, and breakout sessions covering both industry and community issues. Although the schedule hasn’t been released, past conferences have covered everything from investigative reporting to freelancing basics, visual/design work, social media, photojournalism, and programming. The conference also includes a career fair and allows both student journalists and professionals to get critiques from seasoned veterans in the industry.

14. ONLINE NEWS ASSOCIATION ONA15

Dates: September 24–26
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Cost: Although the exact deadlines have not been posted, early bird tickets will cost $439 for members and $769 for non-members. “Getting closer” tickets will cost $549 for members and $879 for non-members. And “almost there” tickets will cost $659 for members and $989 for non-members. Student members pay $150 and non-member students pay $175. Last year, registration closed two weeks before the conference.
Why you should go: Online News Association is at the cutting edge of digital reporting, and this conference is a perfect opportunity to geek out on everything from legal issues to news gathering techniques. If you’re a developer or technologist working with the media in some capacity, you will find a happy home here, whether you’re looking for nitty-gritty hands-on sessions or conceptual discussions. For this reason, ONA attracts attendees (and vendors) from the Guardian, The New York Times, Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress. The combination of star power and everyone being on multiple devices at all times makes it a bit more challenging for freelancers to network, but the amount of quality information presented more than makes up for it.

15. SOCIETY OF ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISTS 25TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Dates: October 7–11
Location: Norman, OK
Cost: Not set. Last year was $240 for members, $80 for students, and $1,150 for non-members.
Why you should go: Whether you cover fracking, tornadoes, pollution, or conservation, you’ll get to explore facets of environmental science with advocacy leaders, scientists, government officials, and fellow environmental journalists. Although the schedule isn’t posted yet, the Society for Environmental Journalists conference will take reporters on tours to renowned research and operations centers that deal with severe weather, climate, water conservation, and oil exploration. You’ll also be able to ask experts questions on-site.

16. JOURNALISM AND WOMEN SYMPOSIUM CONFERENCE AND MENTORING PROJECT

Dates: Oct 9–11
Location: Whitefish, MT
Cost: Not set, but last year’s early bird rates were $345 for members and $445 for non-members. Regular rates went up to $375/400 for members and $475/500 for non-members.
Why you should go: JAWS CAMP has a cozy and comfortable vibe, with conference attendees encouraged to wear jeans and t-shirts. Although the schedule isn’t yet set, past conferences have included panels on new media ethics, intensive training in editing and investigative reporting, documentary film screenings, morning yoga, and cocktail hours.

17. SCIENCEWRITERS 2015

Dates: October 9–13
Location: Cambridge, MA
Cost: Not set, but last year’s rates were $175 for members and $325-$350 for non-members
Why you should go: This joint conference, bought to you by the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, features briefings on scientific research, professional development workshops, lab tours, and science field trips.

So there you have it — conferences as close as your backyard and as far as Puerto Vallarta. Remember to register sooner rather than later, as early bird prices increase, hotel blocks fill up quickly, and limited field trip slots at some conferences disappear.

This post originally appeared on Contently.

An investigative journalist at heart, Yael writes about world-changing tech startups, online privacy, and cutting-edge fitness research. She covers controversies and movements with nuance and depth.

The post Your Guide to the 17 Journalism Conferences Worth Attending in 2015 appeared first on MediaShift.