Amanda was laid off from a magazine job, and now has to scrape by as a wage slave blogger in Laurel Touby's empire—where she's reportedly paid one third her previous salary. Meanwhile, Laurel Touby and her husband are taking a few months off right now just to travel around the world, doing whatever they like. Hm.

Under these circumstances, it's probably okay you didn't get a chance to shout out Fishbowl NY, Amanda. Good luck out there.

Following the Project on Government Oversight's report that the guards, who work for ArmorGroup, regularly run around naked, get drunk and act out juvenile homoerotic fantasies, Sen. Claire McCaskill has called on the State Department to launch a full-fledged investigation. The State Department, meanwhile, has called the allegations "very serious" and promised that they will talk to ArmorGroup about "addressing deficiencies in their performance." Nor will Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tolerate such antics.

That is, in a word, doubtful.

In fact, the State Department has been investigating ArmorGroup since the beginning of its contract, in July of 2007, when it was found to be "deficient" and the group was said to "gravely endangers performance of guard services."

A related Senate report also found problems, like the fact that the childlike contractors were abandoning posts. It went on to label the scenario as "a case study of how mismanagement and lack of oversight can result in poor performance." State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that yesterday at a press conference:

We've been investigating this organization for some time now. We understand that we have made some – we have pointed out to them some of the deficiencies. And I can't answer right now from this podium exactly what they have done in response to this letter.

The Department again raised concerns in 2008 and then, later, a Senate probe also found problems, like the fact that contractors were abandoning posts. Yet, despite these misgivings, the contract went on and was reaffirmed earlier this summer. Obviously the State Department isn't taking things too seriously.

Of course, the Department has very little choice, because, frankly, they need contractors like a junkie needs a fix.

As of March this year, contractors made up 57 percent of the Pentagon's force in Afghanistan, and if the figure is averaged over the past two years, it is 65 percent, according to the report by the Congressional Research Service.

Our military's so depleted and overstretched, the Department has come to rely on these contractors, even if they are man-beasts who get off on eating chips from one another's ass cracks. The Department relies so much on them, in fact, that it has yet again renewed its contract with Blackwater, which was previously banned from operating in Iraq, where its agents are, among other things, accused of killing 17 civilians.

At best, the men involved in the most recent contractor scandal will be dismissed, only to be replaced by more buffoons who will then find even more outlandish ways of entertaining themselves.

Clinton is dealing with North Korean ruler Kin Jong Il, a sick, vengeful, homicidal nutjob of an autocrat. His underlings have accused Ling and Lee of crossing their border and faking video of human rights abuses; they've also extracted a confession from the no-doubt terrified reporters.

For now, the woman are reportedly "well" in a guest house in Pyongyang, a sign that the North Koreans still wants to negotiate their future. Clinton's comments are as much of an accommodation as the U.S. is likely to give the country. In response to a probably-planted question at a State Department employee "town hall," Clinton all but apologized on behalf of the journalists, a bid, surely, to win their safe return.

The informal context gives the U.S. just enough wiggle room to say this isn't an official national position:

"The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse
for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it
happened," Mrs. Clinton said Friday morning during a wide-ranging
question-and-answer session with State Department employees. "What we
hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty
through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their
families as soon as possible."

Yes, whatever, we're so very sorry, just send these innocent — sorry, heroic — women home already.

[NY Times]

First off we have Defamer founder Mark Lisanti, pictured at left in his annual Nikke Finke Halloween garb, who yesterday kicked off a new gig writing a thrice-weekly column for Movieline, the Hollywood site staffed by just about everyone who ever toiled at Defamer. Mark's inaugural piece, an always welcome evisceration of Michael Bay, can be read here.

Next we have former Gawker editor Sheila McClear doing her part to start a movement to boost the self-esteem of freelancers everywhere.

If you're freelance, unemployed, or underemployed, you probably work at home and don't always wear pants either. (Gentleman–no, those ratty "writing shorts" do not count.)

This Friday, July 10th, let's all make an effort to all put on pants. Fridays are often a time for a more relaxed dress code in offices. But not for the jobless. This Friday, take a shower in the morning, fix your hair, and put on some nice clothes even if you won't be leaving the house. Nice shorts and skirts OK too, but NO boxers or pajamas–you must wear clothes that you could actually go to a job in. (Send in pics if you want!)

Too often, un- and under-employment causes people to fall into a rut. This will give everyone an extra shot of self-esteem and aura of respectability as we continue our job hunting. It'll make us all feel better.

We should add that there's a picture of a pantless young woman who may or may not be Sheila accompanying her ASSME post on this. Just saying.

Irate Michael Bay Blasts Paramount Over Unacceptable Tie With Ice Age 3 [Movieline]
Movieline Welcomes Defamer Founder Mark Lisanti to the Family [Movieline]
July 10th is the First Annual Freelancers Put On Your Pants Day [ASSME]
pic via Movieline

The official Korean Central News Agency said the TV journalists at their trial had admitted criminal acts.

It said they were "prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle" the North's system "by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it."

As if hurling slanders weren't imperialist enough, they had to start tossing calumnies as well! They couldn't do it from afar; they had to sneak into the people's paradise, "for the purpose of making animation files to be used for an anti-DPRK (North Korea) smear campaign over its human rights issue." Animation files, as you know, require espionage. Just as reporting on human rights violations is equivalent to a smear campaign.

Other stories from the Korean Central News Agency today:

• Japanese Reactionaries Accused of Agitating Reinvasion of Korea
• Kim Jong Il's Exploits Praised
• Reason Why He Left Stick in Car

Talented young writers, here are your choices in the media world of 2009: Be laid off; pay $13,000 for an internship; or become a Craigslist slave for "valuable" "exposure."

Terrible Ad #1: A mysterious "Mr. Smith" offers you the opportunity to apply for 'Bleue Blood: The Lifestyle Manual For the Modern Gentleman." Hopefully as a copy editor, heh. Modern Gentlemen don't need salaries, but they do need "national exposure," on the internet. And "it would be good if you have a professional pen name." So nobody can associate you with this publication.

Terrible Ad #2: The pay scale here is "sliding." Presumably "$2 (blog posts)-$10 (features)" would be the top of the sliding scale. Something to aspire to! Judging by the site, the writing work's not too intense, but do they have to know so much about your tastes to decide whether you're capable of, say, re-posting a video from another blog? It's not hard, trust us! "Because of the volume of submissions," do not expect a response to your essay-length application for this pauper-esque job.

We'll make it to that mountaintop yet.

Our tipster sends this photo of "Invoice Rejection Letters" sent by MTV, saying 22 submitted invoices were not accepted (which can happen for reasons ranging from blurry printing to allegedly bad P.O. boxes to, oh, anything):

These pictures illustrate 22 - Yeah....twenty fucking two - of these such letters sent out for each invoice they decided they didn't want. THESE ALL CAME IN THE MAIL. TODAY. AT ONCE.

These invoices being rejected are from FEBRUARY!! In this case, it was for lacking a number (called a VIN) they didn't even start insisting be on invoices until APRIL.

Congratulations to Viacom on its cost-cutting efficiency.

A tipster forwarded us an email from Don Hellinger, the president of Pinchazo Publishing Group, saying that his holding company, Quadra Media—a secured creditor of Surface Publishing—foreclosed on Surface in early April. If you're a freelancer looking to get paid, too bad! Hellinger says that new owners Quadra aren't responsible for any of Surface's debts incurred before they took over. He also says that Surface has no assets left. There's no explicit statement that Surface is folding, but that's usually what happens when you have no assets. We've emailed Hellinger and we'll update this post with his response.

UPDATE: And here it is: "Surface will continue to be published as a Quadra Media property." He also says that "There have been some staff reductions but the magazine will still be published 6 x per year."

In the meantime, don't forget to send us your stories about getting stiffed on payments, freelancers. Volume III of the Late Payment Offenders series may be coming as soon as this week!

In February, MTV told "permalancers," who it has historically screwed over in a slavey caste system, they'd have to leave at the end of nine months so MTV wouldn't have to provide them costly benefits like health insurance, a tipster told us. Supposedly they could get rehired three months later.

But it doesn't look like that's going to happen, thanks to the economy; staffing levels, especially on the dot-com side, are being sliced, often (we hear) by half.

The freelancers just laid off by the cable network — if you know how many, we'd love to hear from you — have another month to go and have been asked to train their replacements, a tipster informs us. MTV presumably won't have to pay benefits to those replacements, since they're new hires (yes, MTV is hiring while it's firing).

The sloughed off temps might not be able to come back in three months, due to the reduction in positions, but something tells us they might have some luck in nine. Mark your calendars, permalancers.

The Charges, Straight From the Freelancers

Men's Journal: One writer's still waiting for a payment since April, 2007.

Genre Magazine: One person still waiting since November, 2007. Also, I'm still waiting for a freelance payment for a story I wrote for them last year. Too bad Genre folded last month. I still want my money, you fucking deadbeats.

Metro NY: Don't respond to calls for payment of multiple invoices, including one more than a year old.

Contemporary: Failed to pay a freelancer for stories dating back to last year; publisher's full of excuses.

Toronto Star: Seems to have lost the ability to pay for a story from April, 2008.

TONY: Screwed a freelancer for a year-old story espite being "harassed endlessly to no avail."

Nylon: Nada for nine months.

Metro Pop: The LA mag has taken more than half a year to pay less than $50.

Canadian Geographic: Still owes for photos submitted last summer.

Zink Magazine: Editors and writers are having trouble getting paid for any work they've done since last summer.

The National (UAE): One writer's had to wait up to six months for a check; funny, since The National is the paper whose leaked salary spreadsheet showed they pay better than 99% of the papers in the US.

SUCCESS STORY: Our stiffed Brooklyn Paper freelancer who topped the first chart finally got paid. Gawker gets results!

DISCLAIMER: All info is provided by you, our loyal, disgruntled readers. Publications that want to dispute this can email us. But don't try to lie your way out of it; the best solution is to pay all your invoices in a prompt fashion. For all you stiffed freelancers out there, we will continue this feature with your help. Email us your own media payment time stories (good or bad), Subject line "Payment time."

The rumor we heard yesterday about King magazine folding has been confirmed. You'll have to get your ass elsewhere, gentlemen.


Multiple sources tell us that 20 or more employees were laid off at Conde Nast Digital today. Designers and product management types were among the casualties. The Conde crumble continues. Also, a tipster tells us that the Boston Globe laid off four full-time union employees this week, all of whom were women, they say. And we hear that yesterday's Forbes layoffs actually stretched into today, because the company couldn't get to everyone yesterday. Harsh.


Bill Keller is getting salty! The NYT editor wrote Vanity Fair a kind of pissy letter dismissing its recent piece on Pinch Sulzberger. "I'll bet on Arthur Sulzberger finding the answer to that question [of journalism making money] before Mark Bowden does," Keller wrote. Zing! We must admit, we do like Bill Keller. He's a feisty one.


Oh hell, those two poor Current TV journalists who got caught sneaking into North Korea are now facing up to 10 years in prison there, according to the wacky NK government. Good lord. If that's not a bluff, it's time for some Rambo.


The list of Pulitzer Prize finalists hasn't leaked this year as usual, probably because everybody in newspapers is too sad to care much.

Plenty's print version is dead, but Mother Nature Network, an environmental media company owned by former Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell, bought its website, Plentymag.com. Now, one writer who got stiffed by Plenty (there are plenty of em, ha) tells us that several of them are trying to get MNN to pay up;

No one was paid anything for the last issue on stands (it was a December/January issue). And no one was paid, not even a kill fee, for the Feb/March issue that was being edited/about to be printed, when it folded. A bunch of us are trying and trying to get paid, and [former Plenty owner Mark Spellun] told us a few weeks back, after MNN bought it, that we'd all be paid in two to three weeks, and of course it's now four weeks and...nothing.

They're going to MNN for their payment, but I'm not entirely sure they're liable for it: this story about what MNN was acquiring doesn't make it clear exactly what they're going to be doing with all of Plenty's old content, if anything. [Are YOU a media law expert? Comment].

Of course, since a semi-celebrity's involved here, loud public shaming is the way to go. Like this post, for instance. Holler and scream and use guilt and eventually Chuck Leavell should decide it's much cheaper to pay you to shut up than to have to go in the internet and read people wondering why BIG DO-GOODER CHUCK LEAVELL DOESN'T PAY THE WORKING CLASS FOR THEIR LABOR????

We should note that our methodology here involved asking people to send stuff in. So it's not necessarily definitive. But if more of you email us how long you've been waiting to get paid (please use "payment time" in the subject), we shall asymptotically approach the truth! Please send us both good and bad stories— for example ESPN Magazine (three weeks) and the Village Voice (ten days) both got props for paying promptly.

The chart above shows the ten longest waiting times we heard about. If you're responsible for paying people at one of the places named above and are unhappy with where you rank, we encourage you to start cutting the checks due to your freelancers. If you've gone through all your invoices and still think we're flat-out wrong, you can also email us. But we highly urge the former.

We'll update this in the future.

A brief explanation of the tips that went into the chart:

The Brooklyn Paper: Editor Gersh Kuntzman has made excuses for nearly two years to avoid paying a writer $40.

Whitewall Magazine: Revising down already shitty pay rate after the fact due to low revenue.

City Lights Media: Owes one freelancer $14,000—since last spring.

Self: Not answering freelancer emails; general shadiness.

RadarOnline: Delinquent for nearly a year; the site was sold to zombies since then. So, good luck collecting.

Surface Magazine: Constantly pushing back payment date, vaguely. We also hear they're late paying full time employees.

Chili Pepper Magazine: Stonily refuse to explain why they don't pay.

Fangoria Magazine: They're a horror! To get a check from, eh. Editor keeps pushing back the payment date.

Cosmopolitan en Espanol: Even somebody's agent can't get a response.

Ocean Style: Avoids emails and repeated requests for payment.

If you are a freelancer or contractor or vendor for a media outlet or media company, we want you to email us and tell us how long it's taking you to get paid these days. Checks coming in on time? A week late? A month late? Never? We want to hear about places that are paying on time as well as those that aren't. (Any standard salaried employees having trouble getting paid, you can tell us too). When we get enough info we'll put it all together in a nice CHART OF SHAME (And of Honor!), or something like that.

In just the last month, we've heard complaints about the New York Observer, Viacom, and Interview magazine. We suspect they are but the vanguard of the proletariat's problems.

Put "Payment time" in the subject line, okay. We'll keep you anonymous.

Sounds fun! Tell your friends! Email now!

Our tipster says that he's been doing production work for Viacom for years, but was just recently introduced to the joy of the new and improved vendor-screwing system:

Around 1/9 of this year, I got a letter about Viacom switching over to Invoiceworks, saying that you could no longer submit invoices to an employee, everything had to be done electronically. The letter also stated that you had to submit your vendor info online by 1/5 (these dates are from memory, I don't have the letter in front of me. But basically, the deadline for submitting your info was about 4 days before the letter arrived.) And to make matters worse, they didn't have the electronic submission process functional until early February, by which time I was sitting on 5 weeks worth of invoices for the year. And Viacom constantly pitched this as a way to expedite processing and payment of invoices, not mentioning to vendors that the payment window was extended from 30 to 60 days. (I found this out from someone in Viacom accounting.) I don't recall ever having been paid within 30 days in the past either. And since the switchover, it's become impossible to actually talk to a human being about issues w/ payment. The one thing that did help in the past was when you could actually talk to someone who was sympathetic about your situation and would help push things through. Now I'm dealing with issues like invoices being declined because a contract wasn't signed on their end, which starts the process all over again - I'm guessing with a new 60 day payment period.

As a small business owner, I've been paying my vendors, many of whom charge late fees if you don't pay them in a timely manner. I know someone in a similar situation who tried the late fee thing with Viacom and they basically told him they'd find another production company if he had a problem w/ their payment process. It's infuriating because on paper I'm making a pretty comfortable living (I'm owed around $60K by Viacom so far this year) but in reality, I'm living like a college student, taking cash advances on my credit card to pay rent.

Sounds fun! Our tipster also corroborated our report last year that Viacom had just frozen its invoice payments for the last three months of 2008, just because it felt like it. And this is separate from, you know, the hundreds of layoffs last December and the canceled holiday party and the company ban on holiday cheer.

Any other Viacom employees having fun with this new payment system? Email us.

Fashion writer Glenna Goldis has gone public, posting to her Tumblr the sad saga of her attempt to get the $700 she was promised for two pieces she wrote for a Nov. 16 Observer Style insert. Spoiler: She's still stiffed.

But she's been a valiant pest! Here's what she learned along the way:

• Style editor Nancy Butkus was told to pay only $22,000 of $29,000 in invoices for the section. "What I'm being asked to do is immoral," she told Goldis.
• Managing editor Jesse Wegman said no one who worked on the section had been paid. He first called it a "budget screw-up," then later "unconscionable."
• Observer Media Group president Bob Sommer, who is blamed for the mess, just took a job flacking for the New Jersey Devils. It is unclear if his duties there will include blocking contract workers from getting the money they are promised.

The Observer was also stiffing people two years ago. So screwing over freelancers is a grand ole Observer tradition that should obviously be retired, but will probably continue forever. Sort of like "Sparrow."

Our tipster writes, by way of preface:

So I recently got this from a freelancer who now works at the Daily Beast. Believe it or not it is actually the most insidious and annoying email ever. Though it may not seem so prima facie, it in fact contains everything that is wrong with journalism and a particular type of freelance journalist. Where the source of the shittiness is unclear, I've annotated. Feel free to post but do not, per favore, use my name.

Bile, with footnotes! We love it. Syme is 25 and has a Tumblr, if that helps paint the picture. Syme's offending email:

From: Rachel Syme

Date: Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 5:11 PM

Subject: Know anyone who has moved away?

Hi all,

Doing some canvassing for a story I am working on for a magazine [1] (if you want to know which one, I'll tell you when you e-mail me).[2] In any case, it's a very respectable one. [3] Working on a piece about New Yorkers who, despite being tried and true, have left the city due to downsizing of their jobs or hopes...but intend to come back. People who are taking advantage of the recession and down mood around these parts to pursue a longtime passion elsewhere, and then bring it all back home at some point. [4] Do you know anyone?

Let me know asap. [5] Feel free to pass this along to someone who might know someone as well. Looking especially for people who have left the finance sector to do this.[6]

And hello. [7]

Rach

And the promised footnotes!

1. Elision of the first person singular. Though Ms. Syme has taken the time to write this email and send it to hundreds of her contacts, she hasn't the time to start sentences with I. This stems either from the baseline assumption that of course she means I because everything is about her anyway or from insisting on a false sense of urgency and drama, because writing I is simply too time consuming. Related: False Amity.

2. Unnecessary Secrecy. Including this as a parenthetical aside, Ms. Syme infuriatingly presupposes the following: The reader of said email, who is being asked for a favor by Ms. Syme, wants to know badly exactly who she is writing for (as opposed to not caring). That though Ms. Syme won't share this information with hoi polloi, you will care deeply enough to email her to find out. Related: Universal Secrecy, the annoying habit of telling every friend, colleagues or acquaintance information of a personal nature and swearing each in turn to secrecy, often preceded by "Totally OTR."

3. Insecure Vainglory. But even though she can't tell you exactly which magazine it is, rest assured, it's better than the one you are writing for.

4. Offensively Clichéd Story. All this is a preface to a request for sources for perhaps the most clichéd and already written recession story ever. There's only one thing worse that receiving these sorts of emails for good stories you wish you had thought of. That's receiving these emails about bad stories, you've already thought of, realized have been written elsewhere and that, out of pride and professionalism, you've spiked.

5. Urgency Shift. Ms. Syme, no doubt late in beginning her research [OMG, Fashion Week!] would like you, dear reader, to drop what you're doing and respond as soon as possible. We're on deadline here people!

6. See point 4.

7. False Amity. Ms. Syme, with 841 Facebook friends, is not just a professional contact, she'd like you to know. She's also your friend. Even if the only moments of contact come in a request for sources or of personal crisis. Also presupposes, you'd be deeply hurt if she didn't say hello.

(Photo by Nikola Tamindzic)