Hey! Liked your piece! Could you re-do it for us?! Can't pay you, by the way!

They were asking him to repurpose a story and reporting he already did and was paid for. He deserved to be paid but not that much.

 

How much is "not that much"?

 

Seriously. If a guy in Thayer's position calls them on their bullshit, maybe they will rethink the way they do business. OK, probably not, but he had every right to take offense and give them a kick in the ass for trying that.

 

He still deserves to be paid for the time it takes to repurpose it. I don't know how much, but $100 probably isn't the right answer.

 

I could see the $100 (or even much less) if it was a straight up reprint. But they were asking him to take a 4,300 word piece and turn it into 1,200 words. That's not a 15 minute job. They wanted him to do more work for no pay. I can see why he got upset.

 

http://shouldiworkforfree.com/

 

I think you base your effort on the pay. If they give you $100 to repurpose it, try to do it in three or four hours. Cutting something that long shouldn't be that hard for a veteran journalist. Ideally you'd get maybe $300, which would be worth spending a whole day for.

 

If another publication owns the rights to that story, he would probably have to write a different version rather than trim the original.

 

I know, but he looped in those editors so it would be their call. His version for The Atlantic would be truncated, so it could end with a note that there's a more complete version of the story elsewhere.

 

Not for nothing, he was obviously offended or he wouldn't have posted the conversation on his blog. No need to pretend he wasn't.

I would have been offended and I don't have a percentage of Thayer's talent or experience. Hell, I'm practically offended for him.

Let's not pretend it's shocking that a well-known publication offering peanuts (or no peanuts in this case) is that unusual.