Gawker
At this point, the soul of professional sports is beyond worrying about: Athletes are frantically self-interested; marvelously self-absorbed; always looking for any edge, however unfair; and forever leaping from team to team in search of a few more dollars. In other words, the jock market already has the morals of the stock market.That's the last paragraph of "The Jock Exchange" Michael Lewis' contribution to the premier issue of Portfolio. It's also a $636 paragraph, if this anonymous commenter at DealBreaker is to be believed.
"Michael Lewis is receiving $12+ a word from Portfolio. $100k, two pieces this year, each approximately 4k words." Let's assume for the moment that these figures are in fact accurate, and that Michael Lewis is pocketing $24 for every "of course" he can slip by the magazine's phalanx of editors. (The yearly amount of his contract doesn't sound totally insane, at least.) Is this the new gold standard for magazine writing? Did Tom Wolfe give them a discount because they hired his daughter? Did John Hockenberry get screwed over because his piece was mainly pictures? Again, we're unsure—although that $125 million investment figure makes a lot more sense if this is true—but is anyone out there making more than $12 a word? And who's paying? And where can we get some? We can turn around 3000-word pieces of absolute crap whenever necessary.
Our Big, Fat Portfolio Review: Even Our Pessimism Was Optimistic [DealBreaker]
The Jock Exchange [Portfolio]
Comments
Suddenly, the modern trend toward copious and semi-ironic footnoting seems like a smart business move.
He's probably not fond of contractions.
The soul of professional sports is already lost: Athletes are self-interested; self-absorbed; always looking for advantage, however unfair; and leaping from team to team in search of more dollars. In other words, the jock market has the morals of the stock market.
Hey Portfolio editors! I could have saved you three hundred bucks on the first paragraph alone.
At this point - $36
In other words - $36
At this point, I am looking at the marvelously self-absorded use of the : ; schema, in other words, are the copy editors frantically in search for an edge too cut off a few more dollars? ($420 at 4:20)
Just when I doubt the crying towel was put away over Portfolio, find out someone is getting $12 bucks a word. The slack market has the morals of the hack market.
If Salman Rushdie ever wrote a piece for Portfolio, they'd probably blow their entire Fiscal Year '08 budget.
On the other end of the scale, editors have bumped up their $1-per-word writers to $1.25 -- but then they assign what should be 1,500-word pieces at 1,200, knowing full well that the writers will turn in 1,800 anyway.
I once got a $25,000 bonus for a pitch we won. I wrote--tops--100 words across 10-12 comps.
Eat it real writers.
@KarenUhOh: genius.
And who can blame him? he only gets $6/word when he writes about contractions for Slate.
@Otto-Reimer: You could pop those earnings up to $60 with a "Be that as it may."
@TedSez: $1 a word isn't the other end of the scale; at least on the West Coast, it can be a bounteous, beautiful thing and mightily piss off your friends (who are still getting thirty cents). I have never seen an old coworker angrier than the episode where Carrie Bradshaw got $4 a word from Vogue. And judging by that sadness yesterday about the Post and the Daily News paying experienced reporters $40k a year, New York sucks it too.
I’m not sure if this explains the Michael Lewis “Jock Exchange” piece or means it’s even more frustrating that there’s still so much A’s material in there…but there are rumors (via Gawker via Dealbreaker) that Lewis is making $12 a word(!)
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