I’m feeling a little disheartened by the state of local journalism and the writing business more generally. My old newspaper, The South Brunswick Post, a publication to which I devoted nearly 20 years of effort, is no more.
The opportunities to edit or write on a freelance basis are not as prevalent as they’ve been, and most do not pay well. (I’m lucky in that my primary freelance home, NJ Spotlight, offers decent pay, but my schedule makes it difficult to do the kind of reporting needed, so I don’t do as much as I should for them.)
So, I’m wading into crowdsourcing to generate revenue, turning to Patreon, a patron-based, subscription format.
Here’s an example, a limited distribution chapbook: http://www.patreon.com/posts/16743963
I don’t know how effective it will be, but scraping by while relying on old models is getting increasingly difficult. News sites struggle to generate advertising and have been slashing payrolls, relying more and more on freelancers but paying them less and less, or free content. Book publishing is more and more about blockbusters, and anything of a more literary bent is consigned to underfunded small presses. The old approach — get a sinecure at a college — is also becoming increasingly difficult as academia moves more and more toward a corporate, just-in-time-inventory model that puts much of the teaching responsibility in the hands of underpaid adjuncts.
I’ve been working this vein — adjuncting and freelancing — since I was laid off by Patch in 2012. It’s getting increasingly difficult to make it work. I’d like to teach college English full-time, which would allow me time to write and lessen the need to rely on freelance work, though I’d still do it. But I’m feeling less than optimistic, as I said.
I may just be tired, or punch-drunk from all the blows inflicted by Trump and a corporate-controlled system, but I’m feeling a bit pessimistic. Patreon, et al, may offer some relief.
