Numbers That Don't Make Sense Dept.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jun 02, 2009 10:38 pm

Demand Studios is recruiting experienced freelance line editors and copy editors to edit our growing library of informative articles. Demand Studios publishes thousands of articles a day, and our content reaches a highly passionate audience that demands accuracy and quality.

We are looking for dedicated editors who can deliver quality work in a timely manner and are comfortable occasionally communicating with writers. Some fact checking is also required.

We will only accept candidates with 5 years of demonstrated editing or copyediting experience with a newspaper, magazine or book publisher.

This is a part-time freelance position and all work is done online. While your schedule is flexible, we do require our editors to commit to working a minimum of 12 hours per week, every week.

We pay a flat fee of $3.50 per article, with most editors averaging $20-$25 per hour, paid on a weekly basis via PayPal.
(JournalismJobs.com)

Editer · **Posted:** Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:21 am

I just took their editing test -- two articles, about 450 words each. Doing 9 or 10 in an hour should be well within my abilities. Numbers make perfect sense.

Reading their style guide taught me some things about search-engine optimization, as well.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jun 03, 2009 7:19 am

I'll concede that nine 450-word articles per hour might be edited to Demand Studios standards, but they could not be edited properly in that time.

Editer · **Posted:** Wed Jun 03, 2009 9:23 am

Edited to the client's standards = edited properly.

I looked into this company before applying. I have no problem editing to their expectations. For instance, as I understand it the editors get paid the same to kick a file back for a rewrite or, failing that, to spike it as to approve it for publication.

The newspaper industry, especially the larger publications, has a long tradition of intensive editing. But as someone recently said, we've been defending our practices as if they were principles. It's too easy to conflate the two.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jun 03, 2009 3:15 pm

"Editing" nine 450-word articles in an hour is not editing, it's processing. I won't do it, so there's more work for everyone who can can live with it.

SuchASlot · **Joined:** Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:01 am **Posts:** 1189

Amen. I'd leave editing altogether if my choices boiled down to leaving or doing this sort of thing.

Editer · **Posted:** Wed Jun 03, 2009 11:03 pm

Must be nice to lead such blessed lives.

SuchASlot · **Joined:** Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:01 am **Posts:** 1189

Not hardly, and certainly no offense intended. I've been narrowly avoiding layoff for about a year now, and I have no idea what I'll do when it happens, but I know it won't be something like this. Phil's right, it's not editing, it's processing. If that doesn't make a difference to you, it's probably a nice, flexible way to supplement your income. But it does make a difference to me. I'd sooner go back to bartending, which the next person may find unappealing for any number of reasons. That's life.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:00 am

Yes. I think it's fine if that's what people want to do.
I can't rule out working for such low pay, but if I do, it will be fun and I will decide how to edit and how long it will take.

Editer · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:22 am

Fair enough. But I do detect a whiff of "that's not editing because I would never do it", which does seem a patronizing type of high-horsedness. Hey, whatever floats your boat, but what you choose to call the work I do (and that many, many editors do) doesn't change its nature. It's editing.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:49 am

I'm not patronizing anyone, but I know enough about editing to say that a 450-word article can't be edited properly in 10 minutes. If that's where we're headed, go on without me.

GBaker · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:50 am

Ten minutes per article removes any chance of you ever asking a question about anything.

Spellcheck... SEO 'headline'... press send.

It's clerical assistance. And while it's fine for people to do it, it isn't editing.

Editer · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 2:24 am

Headlines are already on 'em. (Most begin with "How to ...") And they have a query system whereby I can kick anything back to the writer if it needs a question answered.

But it's not like I know what I'm talking about or anything.

lfelaco · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 8:08 am

So you're saying the writers are always available to answer your question w/in the requisite 10 minutes, and never take longer than that to come up with an answer? They never have to, say, check with a source, who may or may not be available on the spot? If the material is that lacking in substance, I suppose it could be done, but then it sounds like it's scarcely worth publishing, either, IMHO.

B Cubbison · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:12 am

It's an intriguing concept in several ways. There's a flat rate per article, so the meter seems to be in the hands of the editor. You could spend more time on a story if you wanted, although it seems like you the editor are "paying" for that as your average pay per hour goes down. Kind of scary. But is it possible that kicking a story back to the writer is counted as one editing session? Also, if you do kick a story back, it's not like you have to sit there for the rest of those 10 minutes. I wonder if, in 30 minutes, you might have a story that needs to be kicked back, two stories that need very little editing, a story that needs some editing, and a story that comes back from a writer after being kicked back earlier.

I'm intrigued by the idea of doing the work when it needs to be done, rather than in arbitrary chunks of time. That is, instead of copy waiting for a copy editor's shift to start, or copy editors waiting for copy to come in, you work when there's work to be done. That's a more focused and demanding way to work, for sure. I also wonder if the collection of editors will resemble that in many newsrooms: Some who are efficient and thorough, some who are thorough but agonizingly slow, and some who are quick but cursory.

From the description here, though, this seems like a legitimate effort to bring professional editing to an online process we like to say doesn't have any at all.

lfelaco · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 11:08 am

Somehow I doubt kicking it back to the writer counts as an edit, because then all you'd have to do is keep kicking them all back to the writer and collecting $3.50 every time.

Editer · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 5:13 pm

I'm not sure if it counts as one or two, but once it comes back from the writer, the editor has two choices: Check that the questions were answered, and hit send; or, if the questions were not answered, kill the article. The second edit won't take much time at all. (The writers get paid per approved article, so it's not in their interest to do anything on rewrite except answer the queries.)

The writers aren't expected to be reachable in real time, but I suspect they have deadlines for rewrites. The structure of the enterprise makes quite a bit of sense once you actually take a look at it.

I'll start doing actual work tonight and will have a better idea of copy flow in practice. For now it seems like a fine system.

lfelaco · **Posted:** Thu Jun 04, 2009 8:56 pm

But what about quality control? Couldn't an unscrupulous or just plain lazy editor just rubberstamp everything they were sent and collect their $3.50 per? Keep us posted on how it works out.

Editer · **Posted:** Fri Jun 05, 2009 1:22 am

I'm told our work is indeed reviewed. I have been assigned to a "team leader" or some such, who is to discuss my performance with me periodically.

The intro materials I received noted that occasionally a bad writer gets through the gate, so we have to be vigilant. Left unsaid but surely not unnoticed was that the same must be true of editors, so I can't imagine that our work isn't under some scrutiny as well. We'll see.

tommangan · **Posted:** Tue Jun 09, 2009 2:31 pm

One of my co-workers says she has tried this and found the copy terrible and impossible to edit in 10 minutes.

Groundout · **Posted:** Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:20 pm

Editer, please do keep us updated on this scenario. I'm highly intrigued.

When I consider the number of layoffs at my shop, the added pagination I'm now required to do, the increased hours and the added Web workload, I can no longer call what I'm doing here editing. There's simply no time, and our input has been significantly devalued.

I would love to be working someplace where I felt challenged and felt that I was a key member of a newsroom. But funny, I see fewer and fewer of those places, and they're not hiring anyway.

So if I can do this kind of lesser "editing" from my home, a place I love, I can't see how that would be a bad thing. I would save a fortune in commuting costs.

thanks

tommangan · **Posted:** Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:46 pm

Having joined the nay-sayer brigade, I have to admit I'm a bit intrigued by this too.

Editer · **Posted:** Thu Jun 11, 2009 5:10 pm

So far:

It took me a little while to get used to the rhythm, but I'm at a pretty decent speed now. I'm not hitting $25/hour, but $18/hour is reasonable, and it's about double what I'd get working at the grocery store (my plan B).

One problem I run into is that I have an execrable attention span, and working a lot of short files makes it worse, not better, so I struggle with that. I suspect I'm an outlier in this regard.

Most of the files are in reasonable shape. Some are excellent. One was terrible; I thought about rejecting it outright, but we have to let the writer try to rewrite it with our feedback, and my feedback would have been "Go back and re-take News Writing 101". (The writer bio indicated that said person had graduated from a large, somewhat prestigious J-school, but any of my Reporting II students would have done a better job.) I sucked it up and rewrote it, and left a note for the assigning folks that this writer was incompetent. This was a rare exception.

I've had to kick several articles back to the writers for more work, but usually that's just to get them to clarify an ambiguous point. Except for one writer who I think accidentally lost the revisions before sending, rewrites have not been any problem.

I like setting my own schedule and not having to leave my apartment to do the work. OTOH because it's all done online I can take my laptop to the coffee shop, which is only a cliché because it works -- I concentrate well when I'm there.

So far I give it a B. Nothing spectacular, no great complaints.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:15 pm

Your next milestone is collecting your pay, of course.

tommangan · **Posted:** Fri Jun 12, 2009 12:20 pm

Actually for somebody trying to make it as a free-lancer, this is not as bad as many might think... lots of time is wasted waiting for rewrites or chasing down leads or simply waiting to hear back from people; this would be a good way to make some money -- any is better than zero -- while you're waiting.

Also, the mandate to work fast is good exercise for editing on deadline, and working with raw copy is good practice for anybody hoping to be an assignment editor some day.

Also, something productive to do on furlough days, rainy days, etc.

Some folks think it's their divine right to work the rim at a big city daily and will accept nothing less. Good on 'em, but those jobs have no future.

Editer · **Posted:** Fri Jun 12, 2009 4:36 pm

Tom speaks truth.

Oh, and I got paid today.

Groundout · **Posted:** Fri Jun 12, 2009 11:33 pm

Well, good on ya. I may be joining you in the near future.

One question, though -- the ad says they expect a minimum commitment of 12 hours p/wk.

But if they pay by the article -- and if, as I suspect, this is the kind of gig where you're frequently sneaking in 15 minutes or a half-hour several times a day as other commitments allow -- how do they check you on your hours? It'd make more sense to have a minimum number of articles to get through each week...

Nessie3 · **Posted:** Sat Jun 13, 2009 2:21 am

Editer wrote:

One problem I run into is that I have an execrable attention span, and working a lot of short files makes it worse, not better, so I struggle with that. I suspect I'm an outlier in this regard.

That's been my experience editing copy for a translation company, my current job. The short files eat up one's time by incurring disproportionate administrative work.

Editer · **Posted:** Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:55 am

Groundout wrote:

But if they pay by the article -- and if, as I suspect, this is the kind of gig where you're frequently sneaking in 15 minutes or a half-hour several times a day as other commitments allow -- how do they check you on your hours? It'd make more sense to have a minimum number of articles to get through each week...

That is how they do it, in fact. They probably put the hours in the ad so people would know what kind of time commitment they were taking on.

SuchASlot · **Joined:** Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:01 am **Posts:** 1189

Curious, Editer, how is this gig going, since presumably you're a few weeks into it by now? I notice they still seem to be recruiting pretty aggressively.

Editer · **Posted:** Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:44 pm

Going OK, though I haven't worked in a week because of a move. I got an encouraging performance review recently. The review showed that the higher-ups care about the same sorts of things us editors do.

With luck I'll have Internet access at my new apartment tomorrow and can jump back in.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:38 am

Have you been paid properly?

Editer · **Posted:** Thu Jul 30, 2009 2:53 am

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jul 30, 2009 4:01 am

Then everyone's happy.

EricEdits · **Joined:** Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:41 pm **Posts:** 6

Everything Editer has said is true.

I've been editing for Demand Studios in my spare time since the beginning of June. I've been impressed (and surprised) enough that I'm moving toward significantly increasing the amount of time I have available for it.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon Sep 07, 2009 10:01 pm

Here's an interesting item about "Demand Studios."

Editer · **Posted:** Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:19 am

That piece reads as if the writer, Erik Sherman, has just realized the truth about capitalism and wants to let everyone know. Marx was there a century and a half ago, of course. Sherman doesn't go very far with it, of course -- he seems to believe Demand Media is an anomaly in a world of corporate beneficence. Too bad.

Powderhorn · **Posted:** Tue Sep 08, 2009 3:31 am

A jump to Marx may not be needed here. Erik's points are sound, at least along the lines of devaluing creative output. Do I agree with it all? No. But my thoughts are clouded by not having my own copy-editing application accepted. Somehow they wanted writing clips.

That said, in between jobs, even $12/hour would help ...

tommangan · **Posted:** Tue Sep 08, 2009 8:01 pm

An old friend who has been free-lance writing for the past 20 years sent me an e-mail imploring me to stay away from DemandStudios and other writer mills, as they are ruining the prospects for writers trying to earn an honest living.

I actually put in an application but as it turned out another gig I liked better came in before they got back to me.

egable · **Joined:** Thu Dec 01, 2005 10:24 am **Posts:** 310

I applied and got turned down. Which I assume can mean one of two things: Either I missed something incredibly obvious on the test and need to go back to school, or I edited the way I would edit for my current employer, and they want a different editing style. (I did flag four different items for questioning in one of the samples, but I thought they needed to be questioned.)

I'm tempted to ask the contact person for a little more feedback, because, really, as jobs that can be done from home in a few hours a night go, it still looks pretty attractive. And, heck, I can switch gears and edit to a different organization's specifications pretty easily, as long as I have a clear picture of what the specs are.

tommangan · **Posted:** Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:54 am

I broke out my stop watch and did some reading: I copied a 400-word piece of text from a New York Times piece to see how long it would take me to read it. My time: 1 minute, 20 seconds.

Reading a 400-word piece the standard three times -- without making any corrections -- would take four minutes at this pace.

To earn $20 an hour, at $3.50 per article I'd have just under 10 minutes to edit each one -- with four of those minutes just to read the actual words, and six minutes to clean up bad writing, check facts and craft questions for the writer to fix.

How much editing can you do in under six minutes?

As I alluded to in a previous post, there are wire-service editors who can perform at this pace, but they're working with seasoned reporters and write in an established format.

I wouldn't fault anybody for having this as a keep-fed-and-housed fallback, but I'd make damn sure I'd exhausted all the superior alternatives.

SuchASlot · **Joined:** Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:01 am **Posts:** 1189

Well said.

I admit that I responded to a Demand Studios ad, partly out of curiosity and partly out of greed (easy money is easy money). They seemed very interested, but I couldn't bring myself to actually start editing for them. It feels wrong. To each his own.

(And yes, obviously I may feel differently if I were already unemployed.)

Editer · **Posted:** Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:10 am

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at the folks who've never done what I'm doing telling me what a lousy job I have. Especially when accompanied by the strong stench of elitism.

As to the specifics: If a piece needs more than 10 minutes of work we're told to kick it back to the writer. I just did that moments ago, with a piece written by a lawyer on a legal topic: I was more specific and courteous than this, but basically I said "Translate this from legalese into English". Filling in missing facts and doing complete rewrites isn't my job; knowing how to explain to the writer exactly what the piece still needs is my job, and I'm good at it.

As for reporters who "write in an established format", DS files are rigorously formatted; if anything, that speeds things along.

And this isn't NYT copy with dense prose and literary ambition; it's short pieces divided into shorter sections with, as I said, rigorous formats. The work is boring as hell, but it goes pretty quickly.

I do wonder sometimes whether I'm the only one left on this board who's spent his professional career not working for the NYT or NYT-wannabe publications where the rimmers get the vapors if they have to edit more than three files a night. The majority of us in the trenches edit 15 or, usually, more stories a night, sometimes with multiple hed specs for multiple editions. We don't have the luxury of sitting back with a cup of tea and bemoaning the state of the industry where we're expected to write five heds a night; we're too busy clearing three Metro sections by 10 p.m. Working a 400-word how-to on hanging a door is relaxing by comparison.

And we don't just work harder than you do, a lot of us are better at it than you are. So take your "I'm too good for that job" bullshit and go climb a tree.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:20 am

Like I said earlier, to each his own. If you're happy, I'm happy.

Let's not suggest that the people here are sitting on some privileged perch, though. Of course I don't know all our members personally, but I know a little about a lot of them. Most are trench workers. Many of the ones at the big papers came up from smaller newspapers with their ridiculous workloads. And, of course, a good number of them are out of work.

tommangan · **Posted:** Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:18 am

I've just swallowed a 50 percent pay cut and just moved out of my mother-in-law's living room, so don't think that makes me a member of some kind of Copy Desk Elite.

The rap on Demand Studios is not on how they pay their editors -- it's the exploitation of their writers. Editing is technical work that must be done by somebody -- Demand studios should be paying about $10 an article for editing but $3.50 per is a better-than-starvation wage.

Paying writers $20 per piece seriously undermines the livelihood of writers earning a living on $200 for the same work.

If it's easy money for you, fine, but I would caution that easy money goes away, and time spent doing this is time taken away from finding better-paying work ($20 an hour is minimum wage for college grads -- judging from your ability at telling us all off I can assure you, you're worth much more than that).

[editing to add I realize how much like your mother/uncle/big brother it sounds to be told "you can do so much better" ... doesn't change my opinion that you can, however.]

longwords · **Posted:** Sun Oct 04, 2009 1:19 pm

If I could get a job for $20 an hour, I'd be delighted. As a college graduate with varied editing experience, decent computer skills and a wide range of knowledge, I do think I'm worth that. But the newspaper industry has always ignored the fact that rural papers and smaller papers don't pay those rates.

At one time, my current paper allowed employees to argue for and occasionally receive large raises based on changes in job responsibilities or improved skills. The paper was sold, and the current employer will not adjust wages for individual positions and has been crying poor since the purchase years ago. The annual raise pool has been small (often 2 or 3 percent), and so there's not much available to reward better employees.

From my perspective, having to swallow a 50 percent pay cut means at one time someone was earning a decent salary. My employer can't cut my salary in half because that would put me under minimum wage. My guess is that there are a lot of experienced copy editors who are worth $20 an hour who are earning $9 to $17 an hour and just hoping to hang on to their jobs. At one time I hoped to make $50,000 to $60,000 for a few years before retirement so we could increase our retirement savings and pay off the college loans we incurred for our kids. These days I just hope I can retire in 12 years at age 70 with a job, let alone a salary over $40,000. It's very discouraging, and I think every editor knows that.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:32 pm

I won't work for $20 an hour, but my asking price has come down considerably if anyone cares to ask.

copynomad · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:07 am **Posts:** 623

I don't consider myself too good for any type of editing (or most jobs, for that matter).

I'm open to editing for this type of money, depending on the tradeoffs. (If I get to sit around the house editing in my underwear without office BS and set my own hours, for instance, it might be worth the tradeoffs.)

I would calibrate my editing. If someone gives me eight hours and 15 stories, I will edit differently from if he gives me eight hours and three stories. If someone pays for $20 editing, I won't give him $50 editing. Nothing personal; just business.

Ospovat · **Joined:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:28 pm **Posts:** 4

I got a login just so I could comment on this thread.

I'm a newspaper copy editor from one of those smaller papers (not tiny, though - we're at about 30K circulation), and I'm switching to freelance and online editing as the industry goes down the tubes.

I applied as a copy editor at Demand Studios a while back and failed the test; not sure why, but I didn't meet their exact specifications. Apparently I was borderline. So anyway, I applied as a writer and was accepted. I usually only write fiction; I never even went to J-school, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

The primary thing to know about articles written for DS is that they are NOT stories of the sort that journalists write. They require no live sources, no real citations, and no great level of eloquence. Furthermore, they're rigorously formatted, so the structuring of the article is done for you. For example, you choose a title from the "How to" list that is "How to tie-dye a T-shirt." You claim the title, categorize it, and find a couple of website references (which can be just about anything as long as it's not a competitor, e.g. associatedcontent, wikipedia, etc. - primary sources are always fine). You write a 50-70-word introduction. You fill in a list of "things you'll need." Then you fill in step-by-step "how to" instructions, paste your reference URLs into the references fields, and hit "submit."

For this you get paid $15.

I've found that if it's an article on a subject I'm already familiar with, I can easily do one in 30 minutes or less. If I have to research, it's more like 45 minutes. Never more than an hour. You cannot compare this kind of work to real journalism, because it is simply not the same field. It's churning out simple, formulaic encyclopedia-style entries at an hourly wage of $15-$30. And that is not bad at all.

Most of these articles get published on eHow, although there are a few other sites that they provide content for. Here are my eHow articles with them, for an example of what kind of content they provide:

http://www.ehow.com/members/ds_1fa59d50 ... icles.html

Ospovat · **Joined:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:28 pm **Posts:** 4

And, p.s., at a *management-level* position on this copy desk, having been here for 10 years, I'm making less than $20 an hour in my day job. Which I'm quitting ASAP, by the way.

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 2:00 am

Well, perhaps this sounds silly coming from someone who at one time in this life worked in a dog food factory for $1.65 per hour, but at this point in time that is not enough money to lure me into it.

Ospovat · **Joined:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:28 pm **Posts:** 4

I can't see doing it full-time, that's for sure. But it's nice fill-in work. One easy "article" a day is an extra $450 a month for me. And half the stuff I've written is on subjects I have a personal interest in (like, I have a tie-dye business and can write the dyeing articles without even really thinking about them).

copynomad · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:07 am **Posts:** 623

More power to you folks who've found a good fit at Demand Studios. With how things have deteriorated in the job market, especially among our kind, I'm glad to hear whenever someone lands something that works for him.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Fri Oct 30, 2009 12:59 am

Doug FIsher reports on Common Sense Journalism :

This takeout on Demand Media ... ought to scare the hell out of every journalist. Sure, Demand, known to more people as eHow, isn't doing big-J journalism. It's simply doing the kind of "refrigerator journalism" that for years has seriously helped pay the bills. Only it's doing it for $15 an article for writing, $2.50 an article for copy editing and 8 cents a headline. The scary part, though, isn't the prices per se. It's this observation from Jason Fell at Portfolio (which sounds eerily like the arguments I was making here about commodity journalism long before the bottom fell out):

But what jumped out at me while reading the Wired piece wasn’t Demand’s soaring profits. It was how co-founder Richard Rosenblatt (former CEO of Intermix Media, the company behind MySpace) thinks other media companies, which have been trying to increase the value of their content to at least match the cost of producing it, have the equation backwards. As he’s done with Demand, Rosenblatt said the trick is in cutting costs until they match market value for your content.

Chew on that for a while.

onceahack · **Posted:** Mon Nov 02, 2009 10:38 pm

"Cutting costs until they match market value for your content."

Sounds to me like the campaign slogan for the Worldwide War on Copy Editing.

Ospovat · **Joined:** Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:28 pm **Posts:** 4

I wanted to update and say I've been hired as a Demand CE now. It's $3.50 an article now, not $2.50, and the pay is good for how long it takes. The thing is, when you get an article, you skim it and see if it needs a rewrite. If it does, you comment on everything the writer needs to fix (e.g. content/fact issues, not grammar issues unless they're major) and send it back. At that point, if the writer fixes it, you have to approve and edit it or reject it. However, about half the time, it seems, the writer never sends back the rewrite - and you get paid anyway.

You get paid the same $3.50 to edit a "Fact Sheet," which is a 150-200 word article consisting of 5 subheads with 1 or 2 sentences under each subhead.

While there are SOME truly bad articles, most of the prolific writers have been around there a while, and they don't want to have to fulfill rewrite requests, so they learn to get it perfect. It's not rare to see articles where I don't have to fix anything, or only a stray serial comma or two.

Anyway, I agree with everything that's been said about the quality of the content. It is what it is. It is not what I consider journalism - it's more like crowd-sourced encyclopedia entries with semi-pro quality control. But it's also $20-$25 an hour that doesn't involve me sitting in a newsroom getting berated about falling circulation numbers and hearing that my 401(k) program is being canceled because the company is broke.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Mon Dec 07, 2009 1:58 pm

And here I've been complaining about getting $16 for each office suite I clean at night.

Rio · **Posted:** Thu Apr 08, 2010 1:57 pm

Presented without comment: Demand Media to provide travel articles and videos for USA Today's Web site.

(Los Angeles Times)

msmsry · **Joined:** Tue Jul 05, 2005 12:39 pm **Posts:** 15

Do you really want to work for a firm with "Demand" in their title?

Lehane · **Posted:** Fri May 14, 2010 5:07 pm

Like Ospovat, I'm now signed up with Demand Studios, although as a writer not a copy editor. (They rejected me as a copy editor!) I agree that it's more Google search fodder than journalism, and I've only done half a dozen articles because 90% of their suggested titles seem to involve replacing the lights on a Honda Civic. :-)

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Sat May 15, 2010 8:38 am

*Google search fodder*

Jes' doing your part to make authoritative, primary source material harder to find online.

lfelaco · **Posted:** Sat May 15, 2010 9:01 am

What I don't get is, there are programs that randomly generate search strings to disguise what you're actually searching for online. So how does Demand Studios know they're writing articles to correspond with real searches and not computer-generated ones?

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Fri Jul 23, 2010 3:21 pm

An update from PBS.org:

Quote:

Life of a 'Content Creator'

"A lot of my friends did it and we had a lot of fun with it," said one graduate of a top journalism graduate program when asked about her work for Demand Media. "We just made fun of whatever we wrote."

The former "content creator" -- that's what Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt calls his freelance contributors -- asked to be identified only as a working journalist for fear of "embarrassing" her current employer with her content farm-hand past. She began working for Demand in 2008, a year after graduating with honors from a prestigious journalism program. It was simply a way for her to make some easy money. In addition to working as a barista and freelance journalist, she wrote two or three posts a week for Demand on "anything that I could remotely punch out quickly."

The articles she wrote -- all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list -- included How to Wear a Sweater Vest" and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed," even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog.

"I was completely aware that I was writing crap," she said. "I was like, 'I hope to God people don't read my advice on how to make gin at home because they'll probably poison themselves.'

"Never trust anything you read on eHow.com," she said, referring to one of Demand Media's high-traffic websites, on which most of her clips appeared.

Although chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford has touted Demand's ability to give freelancers a byline and get their pieces published to "a great place on the web," the successful writers I interviewed made great efforts to conceal their identities while working for the content farm.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:52 am

Another update, concerning the IPO filing, at this blog:

Make A Living Writing

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Aug 11, 2010 1:07 pm

Anyone who buys shares in this outfit deserves what awaits them.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 12, 2010 2:33 pm

In today's WSJ:

Quote:

Demand Media, a four-year-old company that has yet to turn a profit, has been on a campaign to lure major ad dollars from deep-pocketed marketers by selling special sponsorships on its own sites, such as the opportunity to feature an advertiser within the text of an article, or producing custom content for a brand.

Just a poor, misunderstood slave-driver:

Quote:

"Because our business is transforming traditional content creation models and is therefore not easily understood by casual observers, our brand, business and reputation is vulnerable to poor perception," the company said in its filing.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sat Aug 14, 2010 3:15 pm

We're a little late getting to this, but AOL apparently has set up a sweatshop of its own with its network of "hyperlocal sites," Patch. This account, with links to previous reports, is based on an anonymous former employee, so of course we cannot judge its veracity. But no one seems to be denying the allegations of ridiculously low pay for mind-numbing, assembly-line work. We can do without the sob story, though.

SuchASlot · **Joined:** Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:01 am **Posts:** 1189

I know it's not the point here, but I am so tired of the garbage turned out by these outfits cluttering up the web. When I'm looking for real answers, I don't want to have to filter so much barely-edited junk. It is about as useful as gossip.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Aug 17, 2010 7:22 am

It’s Patch day in the news news world, as AOL formally announces the expansion of its network of local sites. It’s really a ratification of what we’ve been hearing, as CEO Tim Armstrong stakes his reborn company’s future on professional news content creation, here, specifically local. The number bandied about: $50 million in investment in Patch, resulting in 500 local sites across 20 states by the end of the year. (How does it pick its cities, which have been largely suburban and monied? It’s a 59-variable algorithm, of course!
“Patch expects to be the largest hirer of full-time journalists in the U.S. this year,” says the AOL release. ... Who’s the news competition? Same players, more or less. In fact, we may begin to believe that some local communities will soon be better covered by journalists (though metro coverage still suffers) in this digital age than they were in the analog one. (Newsonomics)

*** You might believe it, but you don't know what you're talking about. ***

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Aug 17, 2010 7:25 am

Oh, right. "Formally."

dmfugitive · **Posted:** Tue Aug 17, 2010 1:57 pm

"Patch" will quickly demonstrate the same thing as everyone else who tries to build such "news" organizations: Everyone wants to be a columnist. No one wants to be a reporter.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Fri Sep 03, 2010 4:09 pm

The Dumbest How-To Content From Demand Media

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Sat Sep 04, 2010 9:53 pm

dmfugitive wrote:

"Patch" will quickly demonstrate the same thing as everyone else who tries to build such "news" organizations: Everyone wants to be a columnist. No one wants to be a reporter.

Yeah, that's my thought. "Patch" will be more top-of-the-head jottings a la Demand Media, I predict. Reporting isn't rocket science, but it does take time and resources, and people have to get paid a little something to do it.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Nov 04, 2010 3:58 pm

Here's an amusing tale of Demand Media, from a one-week washout.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Nov 04, 2010 4:25 pm

And another one. Apparently everyone who dips into Demand Media will come out with a first-person account.

Groundout · **Posted:** Thu Nov 04, 2010 5:29 pm

And here's yet ANOTHER one. This also from AOL, but called seed.com

If you are an editor or a producer who wants to use your skills in a
whole new way, we've got some amazing jobs for you. We are building out
the editorial and operations team for the AOL content platform, an
organization that now combines our Seed and StudioNow freelance networks
with innovative software tools in order to create the very best content
on the largest number of topics in the most efficient ways.

Every one of the manager jobs is appropriate for people with
considerable journalism experience who want to be pioneers inventing new
ways to recruit, train, motivate, assign, edit and produce the work of
creative professionals. (We've also got some other roles for people
starting out in their careers and looking for freelance editing work.
See below.)

Below are short summaries of the job openings we've got. All but one is listed on AOL's corporate recruiting Web site. If you're interested please apply on that site. If you're not, please tell your friends. All of these are full time jobs and can be based either in New York or Nashville, where our StudioNow unit is based. (We want a small, tightly knit team, so we're avoiding remote workers for now.)

Full post http://blog.seed.com

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Thu Nov 04, 2010 6:53 pm

Phillip Blanchard wrote:

Here's an amusing tale of Demand Media, from a one-week washout.

I can't tell if it's intentional or not, but Nicholas is demonstrating that he seriously needs an editor. I'm halfway through his piece, and I haven't gotten to the point of it yet.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Thu Nov 04, 2010 7:10 pm

Phillip Blanchard wrote:

And another one. Apparently everyone who dips into Demand Media will come out with a first-person account.

Almost as burdensome in length, but at least she has an engaging writing style.

Then there's this:

Quote:

In a nutshell, what the company does is to take informational demand and create, in virtual-sweatshop fashion, supply. Basically, if you plug it into Google — “Seasonal mating habits of poison dart tree frogs,” say — it’s got a good chance of eventually finding its way, via a proprietary set of content-churning algorithms, into a list of “topics” to be turned into an article or bullet-point list by Demand’s cadre of stay-at-home moms, independently accredited experts in something or other, magical writing elves, and junior high honors students.

I assume that some people who know that have had a little fun plugging a bunch of crazy shit into Google search engines to keep Demand's writers and editors busy diving down rabbit holes.

lfelaco · **Posted:** Thu Nov 04, 2010 7:25 pm

jjmoney62 wrote:

I assume that some people who know that have had a little fun plugging a bunch of crazy shit into Google search engines to keep Demand's writers and editors busy diving down rabbit holes.

I shudder to think of the poor shlubs who might end up having to write "articles" in response to my every fact-checking search performed on the job. The entire premise that every idle google search is worthy of an article is just so wrong on so many different levels, I can't even begin to describe. The information is already out there for the most part, the problem is finding it. Adding to the clutter just makes the problem worse, IMO.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:01 pm

Agree with recent posters. This is the crap that comes up first whenever you keyword search for anything nowadays. It's stolen, derivative drivel that distracts searchers from finding good sources. Too bad news and research orgs can't pull their heads out of their asses long enough to protect their info and get it out there for people to find. It sucks like all get out that companies that steal and repackage info are stomping all over the ones that go out and get it first hand.

News publications and colleges are doomed if someone doesn't step up and set things right.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Fri Nov 26, 2010 5:39 am

What a nuisance those Demand sites are. Ehow's the first thing that comes up anytime I do a lazy full-question search. Today I found an article that word-for-word plagiarized a professional nature writer -- and listed the article as a reference for easy comparison.

Stealing words and pictures has become a lucrative business. Someone needs to slap Demand, Pet Holdings and their ilk down hard. (Yes, I did send notes to eHow and the original writer about the above example. Like that'll help.)

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Fri Dec 03, 2010 11:15 pm

The original author of the plagiarized thing I saw on eHow responded to my e-mail. Nice, helpful note about cleaning black walnuts with no invective about the evil transcribers who are cleaning up on her work.

God bless the freelancer and her ilk, but at some point they're going to have to wake up and realize that the companies making money off of high-school-theme-paper versions of their work are not OK.

Powderhorn · **Posted:** Sat May 14, 2011 6:54 am

It's now $4 per article, of which most take about 5 minutes to edit per their guidelines. Put another way, sending 10 back for rewrites, I'm looking at $200 for a few hours of after-hours work in two days. Seems a decent way to make some extra scratch. Is it gripping prose? Of course not. Does it pay utilities? Yes, yes it does.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Sun May 29, 2011 9:11 pm

Eh, just speaking for myself, I prefer to scrub toilets to make ends meet.

Powderhorn · **Posted:** Mon May 30, 2011 3:04 am

Just yesterday, my first boss messaged me on Demand (small world), and mentioned that he was the victim of an RIF. It's keeping his family housed, so ... I don't know to what extent looking down one's nose at it is pragmatic or smug. He has a 35 article-per-day limit -- can you scrub toilets for $140 a day, seven days a week, in a few hours, from the comfort of your home?

Less snidely, though, we both remarked on how useless the work really is. I mean, two of the "articles" I've edited were "How to Draw a Straight Line With a Ruler" and "How to Reboot Your Computer at Home for Free." But it's money. And we're both raising kids.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Mon May 30, 2011 9:00 am

From How to draw a straight line without a ruler:

Quote:

1. Draw a small dot on your paper. Now draw a second dot at the point where you want your line to end. Place your pencil on the first dot, but keep your eyes on the second dot. Connect the dots. If your line is crooked, you probably looked at it as you drew it. Do not look at the line as you draw it.
2. Find the right tension. If you press too lightly with your pencil, your line appears shaky and unstable. On the flip side, if you press too hard, the pencil isn't able to glide along the paper smoothly, which creates a choppy line. Practice your lines, but focus on the tension until you find what works for you.
3. Use graph paper. You can purchase graph paper that is designed with barely visible lines. Don't consider yourself a cheater--you simply want your work to look neat. Take some practice runs, though. You may find the idea from Step 1 carries over as it's easier to keep your eye on the final point, rather than on the pencil as it draws.
4. Experiment with horizontal and vertical lines. Some people can't draw a vertical line if their lives depended on it, yet a horizontal line comes out surprisingly well. If you are more successful at one than you are the other, turn your paper to accommodate the line that you draw better.

How hard is it (for someone who owns a computer) to just find a ruler -- or anything with a straight edge?

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon May 30, 2011 9:25 am

I have to admit that the author has a sense of humor. See No. 4.

Editer · **Posted:** Mon May 30, 2011 12:40 pm

jjmoney62 wrote:

How hard is it (for someone who owns a computer) to just find a ruler -- or anything with a straight edge?

I frequently have to hunt for my ruler. Perhaps your desk is never cluttered ...

lfelaco · **Posted:** Mon May 30, 2011 2:14 pm

I think the "author" with the "sense of humor" is the one(s) who "authored" the search queries "How to Draw a Straight Line With a Ruler" and "How to Reboot Your Computer at Home for Free," thereby generating easy work for Powderhorn. I'm half-tempted to concoct a few ridiculous search queries just to see if they'll show up as eHow articles.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon May 30, 2011 6:34 pm

lfelaco wrote:

I'm half-tempted to concoct a few ridiculous search queries just to see if they'll show up as eHow articles.

I don't think ridiculous search queries have to be concocted to feed the Demand machine, although no doubt some are.

Powderhorn · **Posted:** Tue May 31, 2011 3:05 am

I'm not saying I'd prefer to see more ...

Testy Copy Editors

Numbers That Don't Make Sense Dept.

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