Freelance Cutbacks

I just learned that one of my clients had its stringer budget slashed. I wasn't surprised. Corporate has been hovering above, and they started cutting staff and so forth a few months ago. What's going on with the stringer budget where you are? I expected that many papers would lose full-time staff and then hire more stringers to fill the gaps. But I'd think any SE would sacrifice a a stringer budget to keep as many full-timers as possible.

 

Lots of places have done this. It's nothing new.

What is more endangered nowadays is the part-timer. Most places have rid themselves of part-timers totally. Nice cash savings.

 

I think it's SICK-lycal

 

we've actually increased our freelance budget some. of course, it was crumbs before and now it's somewhat better. still nobody's getting rich off of us.

 

Places around here are using much more freelance stuff to avoid making fulltime hires. A freelancer who hypothetically would write 100 stories in a year would make $7500-$10k. That's a lot cheaper than a salary plus bennies. And most don't write near that many for one pub.

 

Well, our stringers make $35 per story (no mileage either), so our paper encourages the use of stringers. Fucking ridiculous.

 

I've never had any real newspaper offer me anything less than $50.

 

We're a chain of weeklies without an SE - three of us have put the papers together the last seven months - and we were encouraged to get freelance photogs, writers, etc.
The photogs were the big thing, because our cameras are shitty point and clicks and we found two good freelancers.
Word came down last week. Only two freelance assignments per week. Guess our photos are going to suck hard this winter.

 

I know one of our sister papers cut their freelance budget by A LOT at the beginning of the fall sports season for the sports side. At my paper, everything seems about normal. It seems like corporate only cares about keeping it the same for a handful of places.