Back in the fall as I was returning to writing after being laid off from my main hustle, I had an alarming string of bad luck pitching articles. Not only did my pitches fail to sell, but their recipients couldn’t even be bothered to respond to them; and not only did they not respond, but these recipients were either editors or markets to which I had made previous sales, or at least were very friendly to me on Twitter. Follow-ups were likewise met with stony silence. Welcome, Jackson, to the newest flavor of New Media.
I told myself that everything I was doing was wrong and immediately set out to do everything — anything — completely differently. What did that mean? Well, I consciously moved away from my usual subjects, like history or politics, and targeted markets that I had only recently discovered, markets that tended to be less visible. Almost immediately I made a couple of sales, the latest being an article for Nifty Homestead about a favorite hobby of mine.
For me the takeaway of 2016 is that everybody needs to pull their shit together. I had predicted that Clinton would narrowly win Florida, allowing her to limp to a weak victory over Trump. I was very much in error. But here’s the thing: it’s not my job to watch elections. I’m someone who takes a casual interest in the news, and when he does, focuses more on local than national politics. Meanwhile the vast majority of news outlets whose content revolves around things like elections completely imploded in the months leading to November 8.
In the back of my head I always thought that if I landed a writing gig, either freelance or salaried, for a mainstream-ish publication I would be in clover. Now I look at many of them and recoil. While Trump was winning Middle America the ostensibly serious and strait-laced Atlantic published this. More recently the co-founder of The Federalist thought this was good content. Vox and Salon are parodies of themselves. None of it is news, fake or otherwise. It’s Twinkie filling.
I’ve recently discovered Medium. It’s an odd, nonintuitive place, basically a blog aggregator except a few of those aggregated are paying markets. Some of it is dreck; there’s a lot of “I fed the pigeons at the park today and have #feels about it.” But I’ve also found some gems too, like Pacific Standard, which has terrific feature writing, and the history site Timeline. It’s where I’ve been going for thoughtful analytic journalism, and with the exception of the Washington Post, nothing I’ve encountered on there could be construed as mainstream. Of course, it figures the day I write this, Medium closed two offices and laid off a third of its staff.
Do everything different. With Trump soon to be in power and media muckety-mucks falling on their asses, I feel a strange optimism entering 2017. Quoth Conan the Salaryman the morning after the election,
Conan ran a whetstone along the edge of his mighty broadsword. Mercenary work would be lucrative soon, unless he was gravely mistaken.
— Conan the Salaryman (@ConanSalaryman) November 9, 2016