Your experience at Collider (i.e. the reality at Collider and obviously many other <wince> content providers) is horrifying. I know what I hate when I see it in front of me on my screen - short, vapid, carelessly written and obviously not edited, increasingly looking like AI generation even if it may not always be - but I honestly didn’t know enough of what it is to be a good/engaged/thoughtful writer consigned to life in a content mill. Thank you for enlightening us.
Now if only Substack would come up with a more realistic pricing model - a common complaint of people who would like to support writers they appreciate but find the costs of multi-support quickly become unrealistic.
I cancelled my WP subscription after the editorial and other recent control issue debacles, and am thinking of letting The Atlantic go also, though I appreciate its ownership and philosophy regarding editorial and management involvement is is very (very) different than WP. I intend to redirect those subscription costs to writers on Substack, but the very distributed nature of Substack’s subscription model means I can support a lot fewer writers.
Great piece. As someone who graduated with a journalism degree in 2020, it has in fact been tough out here. $30 an article is pretty abhorent, but even those reputable rates are hardly sustainable prices to live off unless you are cranking them out at a rapid pace. And I have either seen those stay the same over the past five years or go down.
Thanks so much for writing this. Singer/songwriter/reluctant playwright here.
The scan adds encouraging people to “write books without writing a word” using AI have made me ill.
Truly creative people will find new applications for the technology, but it’s good to be reminded we’re in a bad state journalistically and a good part of that is unscrupulous content mills.
Your experience at Collider (i.e. the reality at Collider and obviously many other <wince> content providers) is horrifying. I know what I hate when I see it in front of me on my screen - short, vapid, carelessly written and obviously not edited, increasingly looking like AI generation even if it may not always be - but I honestly didn’t know enough of what it is to be a good/engaged/thoughtful writer consigned to life in a content mill. Thank you for enlightening us.
Now if only Substack would come up with a more realistic pricing model - a common complaint of people who would like to support writers they appreciate but find the costs of multi-support quickly become unrealistic.
I cancelled my WP subscription after the editorial and other recent control issue debacles, and am thinking of letting The Atlantic go also, though I appreciate its ownership and philosophy regarding editorial and management involvement is is very (very) different than WP. I intend to redirect those subscription costs to writers on Substack, but the very distributed nature of Substack’s subscription model means I can support a lot fewer writers.
Great piece. As someone who graduated with a journalism degree in 2020, it has in fact been tough out here. $30 an article is pretty abhorent, but even those reputable rates are hardly sustainable prices to live off unless you are cranking them out at a rapid pace. And I have either seen those stay the same over the past five years or go down.
Thanks so much for writing this. Singer/songwriter/reluctant playwright here.
The scan adds encouraging people to “write books without writing a word” using AI have made me ill.
Truly creative people will find new applications for the technology, but it’s good to be reminded we’re in a bad state journalistically and a good part of that is unscrupulous content mills.
Former Valnet editor here. Let's talk.