I am a freelance journalist for nearly 20 years. I am Polish and I did a podcast in English recently about Polish people helping Ukrainian refugees.
I was approached by an American portal asking me to make an interview and write a profile piece on one of those refugees. I am based in Scotland but I spoke with my friend in Poland who lives on the border asking if she would be interested. She said she just has a fantastic story which is simply too big for her local paper so why not?
So I came back to this American lady and told her: I got better idea, my friend will do it for you and, as she does not writes in English, I can translate it.
She liked it, but now we have to sit at the zoom meeting with her and her editor (and they kindly allowed me to act as a translator for my friend who does not speak English) then I have to register through their website giving links to examples of my work and write a test piece, then my friend (who does not speak English, remember) has to do it as well, and only then we will be blessed with the right to write for them.
Seriously? It's them who approach me to commission a piece and now I am to send them CV and write a short test piece for them? Is hundreds of my pieces available on my personal website not good enough for them to judge if I can write?.if that's not enough, cant they just Google my name and see my pieces published in thee languages, including titles such like the times or politico?
Same goes for my friend: she is, for over a decade, a full time journalist for a local paper who writes for national internet portal and does some TV reporting on occasions as well and she was just nominated to a prestigious award in Poland.
At least I manages to hear her rates. $25 for normal lenght stories, $100 for long features. No budget for translation mentioned so I guess we would have to share it between two of us?
I think I will give it a miss.
For comparison, usually my commission process looks like that:
- I approach the title with my idea, or they approach me and ask if I can write something for them.
- we agree on the form and length and deadline
- I submit my piece along with an invoice.
- it gets published and I got my money in the bank a few days later (unless it's an American title, then I have to do all those idiotic tax forms for them in order to be paid…)
And last but not least: I was paid better by Polish or Slovakian titles. Perhaps because they can afford it because they don't waste so much time for idiotic recruitment processes?