A few weeks ago I went wandering around a few recruitment websites. I ended up at Suite101, “an interactive online magazine home to expert and reader commentary.”
Suite101 were looking for writers. From what I can gather, Suite101 are always looking for writers. I filled out the form, sent it off into the cloud, and was eventually accepted. I then read through several house style guides less concerned with producing interesting and readable articles than with generating high page rankings on Google.
I didn’t have much on at the time, so I wrote an article: Google’s Social Media Challenge. About a week later, I again found myself at a loose end, so I wrote another: Has Steve Jobs Lost His Midas Touch?
I’m a professional writer. I write to make a living – in theory anyway. So far, these two articles have earned me the princely sum of 19c. That’s American cents, not eurocents.
That’s no way to make a living. It’s certainly no way to make me write articles doing anything other than rehashing whatever wikipedia and one page of google hits tell me about a subject.
And this is killing print journalism?
