Back in the year 2000, I first tried to write a column for a national newspaper. ‘The Gary Scott Column’ came from a former member of the boy band Blood Red. Gary Scott was a boring man with a boring name, from a boring boy band with a boring name. And he dispensed boring advice.
One of the columns Gary Scott wrote was about gardening. ‘Sometimes you have to plant trees at least months before you see the full benefits,’ was one such piece of advice I remember writing. You get the idea. Satire. Razor sharp satire. These columns of mine were a broadside at the factory-farmed conveyor belt of celebrity columnists who were sluicing around in their own filth at the time and, yes, these columns of mine weren’t as good as they thought they were.
Still, it was a heady period. Back then I was broke and borrowing a room in someone’s flat and borrowing their computer while they went to work. I lived on beans and potatoes. Actually, I was fuelled by beans and potatoes. I wrote these columns in an otherworldly, unfamiliar spirit of industry and spirited, 25-year-old me sent off a couple of these columns, and a covering letter, by post, to the Guardian.
Earlier this week, I was thinking about how the Guardian said no. Someone read my cover letter, read the columns, wrote out a gentle reply, put it through the postal service, and this reply arrived through my (borrowed) letterbox. Oh well, I thought. This headed notepaper has cushioned the blow somewhat. Back to beans and potatoes. It all felt very civil.
Now it all feels a lot less civil. Now it feels like civil war. The Freelance Journalists vs The Editors. Freelance journalists pitch and pitch and pitch and the editors repel, repel, repel them. We spend hours researching and crafting pitches and the editors throw up the barricades. Mostly they do this by ignoring us. In 2000 we were told no in respectful, human ways. Now you’re just ghosted.
This new system – emails making everything faster and more convenient; AI making everything easier; SaaS ‘supercharging’ efficiency – is supposed to be better. But better for whom? Editors are massively overworked. Readers are massively overwhelmed. Journalists weep into their massively overnight oats. It all feels like too much, like way too much of everything.
You know, I ended up writing a few bits for the Guardian. The first thing I wrote, in 2007, I was paid £400 for about 800 words. Nowadays, you’d be lucky to get £250 for the same section. Yet £400 in 2007 is worth £720.40 today. You’re getting paid two thirds less, for the same amount of work. No wonder we’re weeping.
Not that I am a freelance journalist anymore. I’ve got other things to weep about, I don’t want to hijack your weepy train, freelance journalists. And this might seem like sour grapes. In fact, you know what, I think it is sour grapes. For years, at least as long ago as 2010, I’ve daydreamed about writing for the Financial Times Weekend. And earlier this week I finally got around to pitching them. Ignored. And I also recently pitched The Guardian and The Independent. Same thing. Civil war. I fear it’s a war we’re going to lose. And the editors are going to lose it, too. I just don’t know who is supposed to win.
But I do know this. If you want to see a mighty oak tree in your garden, you have to plant it at least months in advance.
[ENDS]
A version of this piece will no doubt appear on my criminally overlooked Substack, Super Duper Mental Health. Yeah, you’re right, the name’s a bit stupid – but there’s a reason for that. Anyway, I post a lot more on there than I do here nowadays so please subscribe if you want more of this kind of thing. (And more of that kind of thing.)
