Should Writers Respond to Comments on Their Articles?
When I first started writing, everyone always warned me to stay far, far away from the comments. Perhaps I’m narcissistic — or a glutton for punishment — but I found it nearly impossible to stop myself...
View ArticleWill Washington Post’s Talent Network Become the Uber of Freelancing?
For all the technological progress that has been made in the past couple decades, it often seems like freelancing for media companies is stuck in the ’90s. When I wrote a story for BuzzFeed, which,...
View ArticleThinking of Starting a Podcast? Read This First
Podcasts first popped up on my radar about 10 years ago, when the trend, fueled by RSS and file sharing technology, was just starting to boom. I loved the concept but couldn’t figure out how to create...
View ArticleNo Unions, No Problem: How Freelancers Are Fighting for Their Rights
“Brooklyn is like a goldmine. We can find so many people. Writers are actually very affordable in New York, which is very nice.” That’s Sean Beckner, CEO of media company Viral Nova, in a New York...
View ArticleScience Journalism Has a Big Problem. How Can We Fix It?
In June, I was putting the finishing touches on a longform story about protecting ecosystems from climate change. After weeks of reportage and three rounds of edits, the publisher was set to...
View ArticleCan WordRates, PitchLab Flip the Script for Freelancers vs. Publishers?
Award-winning investigative journalist, author and anthropologist Scott Carney thinks that writers are getting paid too little. Way too little. His solution? To make publications compete against one...
View ArticleHow Contently’s Content Marketing Funds Investigative Journalism
Click on the image for a look at the full series. Original photo by Jeff Djevdet and used here with Creative Commons license. Anyone paying close attention to the sub-headline of the Guardian’s recent...
View ArticleThe 9 Most Important Takeaways From Freelancers Union’s Annual Survey
Whether you moonlight or work as an independent contractor, freelancing isn’t easy. But if you’re like the thousands of freelancers who responded to the “Freelancing in America” survey, you enjoy the...
View ArticleNative Ads, Even With Labels, Confuse Readers
This post first appeared on the Knight Digital Media Center’s site. Like most news publications, the 14 organizations that participated in a recent CUNY study of native advertising label the content to...
View ArticleNative Advertising Has Flaws, But They’re Fixable
The following piece is a guest post from Contently editor-in-chief Joe Lazauskas. Guest posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this publication. Read more about MediaShift guest posts here....
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