Byline banditry is not OK

By Punteha van Terheyden @vtfeatures

I am a freelance journalist. A chronically ill writer. I work from home now because I am disabled and my pain is too much for an inflexible staff job.

I pay my bills, my very needed private health insurance and my daughter’s nursery invoice purely with money I make as a journalist for the national press. I have a side-hustle, but that involves me paying other freelancers for their talent and time.

I spend hours finding exclusives, cultivating a relationship with the interviewee, making them see I am trustworthy and the journalist best placed to tell their story sensitively, accurately and well.

I work hard to find out what their motivation is for telling their story and what message I must get across in my copy. I turn my detailed interview into a carefully crafted article that captures the very essence of my interviewee and their journey.

I do meticulous readbacks each and every time. Not just of my interviewees quotes, but the whole copy. Newspaper and mag copy. First, second, third rights - each version is fully approved.

My process is laborious, executed with due diligence and entirely ethical. I want my interviewees to be happy with the finished product. It’s a consideration I place above all else.

I have often withheld more lucrative or explosive lines because I want to protect my interviewee, their dignity and their wishes. I don’t want them to become click-bait.

I always ask the newspaper or magazine editor for a look at the edited copy before it goes to print/is published online so I can catch anything that’s been lost in translation or might offend or upset my interviewee.

When needed, I also place copious legal and editorial notes on the top of my copy, so whoever edits it is aware that a certain word or phrasing has been requested by the interviewee, or maybe even that they don’t want certain phrasing in the copy, or that a link to a charity or fundraising page or business page must remain.

I always secure these caveats because of my experience, my contacts, my long-standing relationships with editors and the quality of my work.

When I place a story, I’m rightly paid a writer’s fee for it and secure my interviewees a fair fee too.

Usually, I don’t share my byline. If you see my name next to another journalist, one of three things has happened. I’ve requested/agreed to it because the article has been a team effort with an in-house journalist, I’ve syndicated an article from Lacuna Voices and therefore re-written the I article commissioned a journalist to write for my platform… or, the in-house journalist wanted to look good in front of their section editor and wrongly staked their claim on my hard work.

However, when Goliath news companies lift my exclusives without authorisation, run my words and all the information I have painstakingly gleaned and honed and packaged to make fit for press, not only without my byline but with careless mistakes because they’ve made assumptions from their lack of access to my original interview – and the interviewee –  it really makes my blood boil.

Stealing my copyrighted material because you are a digital outlet with a large turnover of copy and not enough budget allocated to commission every item on your pages is NOT OK.

Fair use doesn’t cover stealing my words. It doesn’t cover regurgitating (badly) what I have written and placed in another title with all the right due process. Fair use doesn’t allow you to deprive me of my income. Fair use doesn’t give you the right to steal an underage and vulnerable teenager’s pictures without authorisation from her parents, just because the story I’ve written about them with permission is now online. 

This doesn’t often happen to me as I have particular ways of ensuring my copy isn’t lifted, but sometimes, it happens anyway.

Last year, it happened to me on a story I’d really put a lot of work and heart into because I adore the family I’d written about and whose journey I had been following for a long time.

I’ve started that day annoyed and upset, if I’m honest. Editors might waffle on that it’s not personal, it’s just the way it is etc etc blah blah blah, but copyright, even for news and journalists IS protected by law here and in the USA for a reason.

It’s called fair use, not take-the-piss use.

When this happens to freelancers, it is personal. That’s my work, my years of experience you’re exploiting and stealing and refusing to pay me for. That’s my much-needed physiotherapy session I cannot afford now because you’ve stolen my copy and whacked your staffer’s byline on depriving me of day two paid-for and authorised rights.

So I repeat: by-line banditry and copyright theft is NOT OK.

Many freelancers experience this every single day and won’t speak out because they fear being blacklisted. I don’t worry about that potential outcome. If I have a good enough story editors will buy it. So unless my copy repeatedly causes legal fallout and complaints, which it doesn’t, I won’t worry about being blacklisted.

Blacklisting is a myth because no editor wants to see a cracking story on the pages or website of their rival simply because they don’t like the freelancer behind it standing up for their legal and moral rights. 

And frankly, I’m fed up of this bullshit. I’m sick of wasting time chasing managing editors and invoicing and writing this, when I have multiple deadlines and paid for copy to file. 

If you want my copy, I might give you permission to use it – if your titles and staff have treated me and my interviewees well in the past. If you haven’t, I reserve the right, and often do exercise my right to say thanks, but no thanks.

 If you want my story on your website or in your publication, you know where to find me.

*To support my mission to end the exploitation of freelancers, payment on publication byline banditry and mindless click-bait, subscribe to my independent digital platform, www.lacunavoices.com to have your hair blown back by beautiful content that is worthy of your time.

ENDS