Last week, reporter Nate Thayer posted an e-mail chain between an editor at The Atlantic and himself, in which The Atlantic asked if he would be willing to adapt a story he’d written for another outlet for their website, for free, and Thayer declined. The argument behind writing, or doing any kind of freelance work for free, is that it offers good exposure. But as Thayer pointed out, exposure doesn’t pay the bills. For more debate about freelance writing and payment, check out this Branch discussion, this GigaOM response, one writer’s explanation of why she writes for free, Alexis Madrigal’s editor’s view on the whole matter, and a whole lot more ruminations on the subject. And what does Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union and author of The Freelancer’s Bible have to say about working for free? The answer is “it depends.”
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