Post 3505 - Monday

Pushing 10:30.

I just re-filed my latest true crime piece to my Frank editor. We spoke during lunch and offered suggestions to make the article better. I made those changes this evening. I look forward to sharing it with you when it goes live in Frank next week. Part with some shekels and get it, why don't you?

I was just reading Tim Bousquet's update on Facebook. He was venting because someone had logged on to the Halifax Examiner  website, accessed some paywall'd content, and pasted it onto his Facebook feed, for all the world to see. Tim was angry because the Examiner is a hybrid pay model, with some free content, and some exclusive content you pay $10 a month to see and comment on if you wish.

I would not describe Tim as a friend, but I certainly see him around from time to time, and he has always been cordial with me. He told me he looked forward to seeing my true crime series in Frank. Whether he meant it, whether he reads it, I have no way of knowing other than by asking him, and I don't really want to do that. The words of encouragement he had for me were enough to get me started.

I do want to focus on the fact that too many people feel they are entitled to free news content. They don't know, don't realize, or just don't care, that it takes time to do this work, and that the people who do that work have to be paid, as any other professional has to be paid for his or her work.

More than a few times, people have asked me to send them my media columns, or my true crime columns. Please stop asking me. Pay for my work buying Frank at the newsstands or by subscribing to either the printed edition or the digital edition. If you do so, you can read my work to your heart's content, plus all the other cool stuff in an edition of Frank. Cut out your fave articles and glue them into a scrapbook. Get a three hole punch, use it, and place issues in a binder. Amaze your friends.

Asking professionals to work for free is insulting and offensive. I would not ask my plumber to work for free. Nor my lawyer. Not my tax accountant. So why ask me to work for free? Stop doing it.

Look: You get a near-daily sample of my work at no cost. This blog, which is 3500 posts strong and which turns ten later on this year. Hundreds of hours of reading if you want to start back to day one. Let me make a buck with the other stuff. K? Thanks.

It has been a very long day. I took a short nap after dinner as I was nodding off during the news. Because of that, of course, my sleep pattern is thrown off, so I will be up awake for a few more hours. I will fall asleep just in time to get up again.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy