Freelance invoicing requiring PDF of stories in print

Starting this football season, my freelance invoices for The News Journal in Delaware require me to send a PDF of the work I did in print after it appears in the paper (which for me, living a little ways from the paper's circulation area, is a moderate inconvenience).

Does anyone know if this is a Gannett-wide policy now, or if it's just this paper?

 

You have to prove to them that your stuff ran in their paper? Shouldn't they know that already?

 

I've been freelancing almost 30 years now and I have never heard of that.

Usually I'm the one asking them to send me a copy of the paper.

 

I've done a little stringing for the local Gannett paper this football season and didn't have to do anything to "prove" I wrote the story. Didn't even have to send an invoice.

So it's that paper's policy - and a ridiculous one.

 

Sounds to me like the person who is in charge of processing payments doesn't want to do any work. Send me your information and proof you wrote an article and I'll pay it as opposed to keeping a log and knowing who his/her writers are, what was assigned and when it was published.

 

Very odd policy.
Most places I freelance send the W-whatever form and the contract agreement. They never make me send anything but those (though I will say one place that once asked for my work for had a 6-page contract agreement, requiring me to initial each page, and sign, dates and notarize the last page. At some point, the freelance check isn't worth it.

 

I've freelanced for a bunch of publications and never heard of anything like that.

 

I've been at a Gannett shop for eight years, and it's been policy for I'd say the last three or four here.
What I usually tell our correspondents is that the invoice center (which is not only not on site, but it's not even in this time zone) needs proof of publication. PDF of the paper or a copy of a tearsheet, whichever makes your life easier.
And if the correspondents ask, I do send them PDFs of a page from our archive.

 

Gannett freelance invoices have been either outsourced or consolidated to a central location. I think it's in Colorado?

Printouts off our website must qualify as proof, because one freelancer who lives outside the coverage area got huffy when his stories weren't all posted. Sometimes we've requested stuff which only ran online due to time or space constraints, and I haven't heard of problems getting paid.

 

My wife regularly freelances for a Gannett paper and has never had to do anything like that. Absurd.