Why I Write For Free

I was reading an article tweeted by Danyel Smith, who herself was at one time the editor-in-chief of Vibe Magazine, from a man named Alan Mutter about essentially being a journalist for free. Apparently he is the CEO of Silicon Valley and therefore should be taken seriously whenever he speaks.

I can agree with that in perhaps other things he writes (I haven’t read much of his blog at the moment). The notion that writing for exposure is wrongheaded is wrong in itself. Everyone in their field has to crawl before they walk. Demanding you get first prize before you are able to prove you deserve it speaks of a grand ego.

Turning this all around, can I really say that I am a journalist? No. I don’t spend all of my days sitting at the computer and I certainly don’t spend all my days trying to pump out movie reviews. I am just a regular guy.

I didn’t go to school to learn how to be a writer, I’ve always been a writer. I just never really thought of myself as a writer in the “can’t stop, won’t stop” thought of mind because I never saw it as a career move. Before I even think about writing, I think about things I have to do beforehand to even have the time to write.

Being a journalist these days is akin to being more of a repeater of the news rather than a person who reports anything new. Thousands of articles about the same event are pumped from different news organizations these days and they all seem to be coming from the same angles. People who dabble in reading the news, or even the ones who write the news, must get frustrated at how to go about making such mundane topics as political corruption seem even remotely interesting to a jaded news reader.

Scott Butki, who used to write for Blogcritics Magazine and now writes for MSNBC’s Newsvine, used to be a newspaper writer. He doesn’t work in that field anymore, but he still churns out articles as if he is a news reporter. There is some payment involved for the articles he writes, but it’s not like the payments you receive are anywhere near the kind you can brag about.

Butki, as well as myself, simply love to write. I think he does more than I do in terms of pumping out content. Still, we think about it in our sleep and in our daily thoughts. It may take me longer to get out a thought more than Scott does, but at least I get it out. If I thought about whether I, journalist or ordinary writer, was gonna make money from something, I would never actually enjoy writing.

Mutter is perhaps right about the money issue. I’m sure during his time when he was building Silicon Valley that he was told his idea was nuts too. Some of us who write for free might actually be having drinks next to him in a few years.