WHAT THE PAPERS PAY
Chaim Bermant complains
that freelances like him are not given enough money
MOST journalists have a manuscript gathering dust in their bottom drawer, and as long as it remains in the drawer they're safe, but if it should ever be published and praised, they become unsettled and edgy and yearn to shrug off the constraints of regular employment for the freedom of full-time authorship.
I shrugged mine off before my first book was even published. I was working for Granada television with little to do and all the time in the world to do it in and I used my enforced leisure to write a novel. A colleague showed the first draft to Tom Maschler; who praised it so lavishly that I immediately gave notice, moved to a cot- tage in the country, and applied myself in earnest to literature; but when I presented the final draft — all 200,000 words of it — Maschler was rather less enthusiastic. I don't know if he actually read it, perhaps he only weighed it, but in either case he turned it down.
It eventually found its way into print (in attenuated form) but that took another two or three years. In the meantime I had to eat, and the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, for whom I wrote a weekly column, kindly gave me a job. I waited till I had four books in print before I took my life in my hands again and left regular employment. That was 20 years ago and I have remained a freelance since.
I live mainly on my books, but my royalties (if any) come twice a year, while my bills keep pouring in all the time. Moreover, while I cannot plead poverty, my debts have increased in proportion to my income, and in recent years I've had to turn increasingly to journalism to make ends meet. Most writers seem to be doing the same so that the field is fairly crowded, but I am nevertheless surprised at the extent to which freelance journalists are exploited by fellow scribes in lucrative-, full-time employment. Few in-house feature-writers earn less than £30,000 a year, and many earn a good deal more. They all, of course, have to be given office space and computers, and all "Joy pensions and other fringe benefits. Given the number of articles they are expected to file in the course of a year, I would say that each article must cost the paper at least £1,500. How does that compare with the crumbs thrown to the freelance?
I have no complaints about the tabloids, bless 'em, which are usually generous and sometimes extravagant, but the heavies are another matter. The Times in particular gives the impression that anyone privileged enough to appear in its pages should, if paid at all, be content with a token fee.
About a year ago I was invited, at short notice, to write an obit of a colourful, if controversial figure, with whom I had been on fairly close terms. I was, however, unfamiliar with his early history and I had to make numerous phone-calls to check my facts. The piece was only about 700 words long, but it was a day's work, for which I was eventually paid £45. I wasn't sure whether to cash it or frame it. (That, I must add, was in the Grays Inn Road days. A recent cheque from Wapping was more substantial.) The Guardian has a religious affairs editor — which is rather like the Methodist 'Well, she's still got about 17 weeks to make up her mind.' Recorder having a wine editor — in the person of Walter Schwarz. He somehow manages to produce a lively and controver- sial column, but only offers contributors — and this without blush — £80 per 1,000 words.
Any old hack can cough up 1,000 words in an hour, and I've done it myself in half that time on a bad line with guns pounding in my ears and the ground quaking under my feet, but a cogently argued piece demands time for reflection. It cannot be written in much less than a day and £80 for a day's work is less than generous. (In any case the length of a piece, as far as I'm concerned, is immaterial, for I start with a long article and boil it down to a short one, so that, as a rule, the shorter the piece the longer it takes me.) The Observer is almost as bad. I was recently asked to write an article on Elie Wiesel. Wiesel is a prolific writer and although I was familiar with his early work, some of his later works had escaped my attention, and I had to settle down to some quick reading. The article was only 1,000 words (the magic figure) but it took me two days to complete, for which I was offered £100. I haggled and eventually received £150.
In fairness I must add that the Observer has also sent me on exciting assignments to faraway places which I would never have been able to visit at my own expense, but none of the assignments took me less than a week, some took as much as a fortnight, and I cannot recall that I was paid more than £300 for any of them.
The trouble with the Guardian and the Observer is that they both have a social conscience, and perhaps they keep their fees low to give their contributors first- hand experience of the poverty and hardship on which they dwell at such length.
The weekly reviews are not particularly generous, but their circulation is small, their resources are very small and so, alas, are their cheques. Even so they are, in comparative terms, infinitely more gener- ous than the heavies. The Spectator is paying £90 for this article, which will not make me rich, but it is probably more than I would have got from the Guardian.
The worst offender, however, is BBC Radio. Local Radio pays nothing at all, while national radio pays next to nothing. I was recently invited to Broadcasting House and spent about half an hour chatting to a charming and attractive young lady from Woman's Hour. I don't know what part (if any) of our conversation was actually broadcast, but the excursion more or less killed the afternoon and I was paid £21.95.
The BBC can plead in mitigation that it is almost as mean to its own staff as to freelance contributors, but what can the papers say? Well, I can quote the former editor of one colour magazine verbatim: 'We only manage on our budget because we screw the freelance.'
Previous page
