Freelancers: Having problems at Toronto Star Touch?
Hi, freelancers. If you’ve been submitting articles or photographs to Toronto Star Touch and have been having problems of any kind, please get in touch with us at freelance@cmg.ca. All communications will be kept strictly confidential.
The Problem of Press Trips
by Keph Senett Freelance writers are masters of ingenuity. We have to be. Decreasing wages and increasing demands have made full-time freelance writing a losing proposition. Those of us who wish to remain in the field quickly develop strategies to make it work: We stack assignments, boost our incomes with part-time jobs, and network like […]
Yellow Pages Canada offering content mill rates for app writing work
CMG Freelance is advising freelance writers across Canada not to accept work from Yellow Pages that pays in the range of 6 to 9 cents per word. Story Board has heard from several highly experienced writers who were approached by Yellow Pages Canada last week with an offer to write “Smart Lists” for Yellow Pages’ […]
Newspapers reject overreaching freelance photography contracts
by Rachel Sanders Freelance photographers have something to celebrate this week: a little pushback from newspapers against overreaching contracts for concert photography. The Montreal Gazette, La Presse, Le Journal de Montréal, Le Devoir and Métro refused to send photographers to the Taylor Swift show at the Bell Centre in Montreal last Tuesday because of a […]
@crapwritinggigs Twitter account mocks low-paying jobs for writers
by Rachel Sanders $5 per post. $0.02 per word. It’s numbers like these that make a freelance writer’s heart sink. And there’s no shortage of jobs with this kind of rock bottom writing rate being advertised on the internet these days. For one writer, it all just got to be too much. Six months ago that person […]
The Globe and Mail urged to “pay the writers”
A small campaign has blossomed on Facebook over the past few hours as freelance writers press The Globe and Mail to pay the writers of their popular Facts & Arguments essay. In the comments section of a Facebook post celebrating the essay’s 25th anniversary writers have been complaining that the paper does not offer any compensation for accepted submissions. Toronto writer […]
President of NPAC decries Black Press newspaper’s call for volunteer photographers
by Rachel Sanders Stories about the devaluing of photojournalism are all too common these days, but it’s still shocking when things hit a new low. When John Lehmann, president of the News Photographers Association of Canada, heard that a newspaper in Victoria was advertising for volunteer photographers to cover weekend events, he found the news jaw-dropping. Even more […]
Radio freelancers battle for copyright
by Rachel Sanders In the two and a half years since I’ve been the editor of Story Board, I’ve posted all kinds of news and opinion pieces about negotiations and disputes over freelance contracts. The contracts in question have come from a wide variety of media outlets — ranging from Canada Wide Media, to the Toronto Star, […]
Unpaid Pan Am Games writing jobs raise ire
Last Thursday, Toronto freelance writer and investigative journalist Andrew Livingstone ran across a job ad posted by the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games. The ad was seeking five writers to produce feature content for websites, publications, newsletters and brochures. Duties included interviewing sources, fact checking and writing to deadline, as well as attending and covering events and […]
A Twitterstorm about unpaid writing… Storified
[View the story “Journalists react to Pan Am Games’ ad for volunteer feature writers” on Storify]
