Writing Gigs: Caveat Emptor Examiner - Bugs, Kinks, and Will We Be Paid?

A writer can find many outlets for the art or craft of writing. As a New York attorney, I do most of my writing for appeals, writing legal briefs. It's not a novel but it's still writing and I love it. With apologies, that is why I have been absent from this blog for the last month. I was served with a 59 page "brief," which is the largest I've ever received. I've been busy doing research and writing and am close to finishing my own brief in response. It's been a challenge keeping it short because of the six days of trial testimony. This is probably my favorite type of writing and I wish I could get more of it. I do have another brief to do in December but will try to write on this blog daily.

In the meantime, I wrote an article tonight for Examiner. Why? Not sure. The "new" Examiner is nothing like the Examiner I initially signed up for. Mind you, not that that was great either. I see articles with misspellings, poor grammar, and one woman was given several columns and she writes like this! and like this!! and like this!!!! This isn't writing--it's butchering language. What my "colleagues" do at Examiner is not a reflection of my work, but it does not speak highly of Examiner, so it is little wonder that the online writing content mills are not highly regarded.

Examiner wasn't good. Now it's worse. The Pub Tool has so many problems they can't even keep up with it. Tech support gets back to you a month later. Photos fail to upload. The kinks and bugs in the Pub Tool come with sincere apologies from administration. Who cares? While I'm trying to throw my computer out the window, they're telling me they're sorry it took me 4 hours to write an article I can usually write in a half hour.

The new Examiner also comes with new legalese. This is right up my alley, of course. So I read the new legal jargon, which I understood, and noticed that there is no guarantee of payment in the new rules and regs. Great. So now there is this possibility that I might not get paid for my writing.
Writers should not value our writing so little that we accept pennies for our articles, or less than pennies for our articles. The only reason I wrote an article for Examiner tonight was to get paid--if you haven't written in a month, you cannot get paid the following month. I haven't written in awhile and I'm still owed money from August. Well, I'd like to get paid, so I figured I would write one article, publish a few photos, and then maybe write an article a month in the future if I feel like it.
A lot of "Examiners" are leaving Examiner. It's a shame, because there are some great writers, albeit not too many, on the site. However, the Pub Tool and the possibility of NO PAYMENT should make everyone think before writing for Examiner unless their articles garner lots of $ and readership. Mine are specialized: New England Landmarks (listed under Travel) and Cooking, which competes with 5000 other cooking titles, so I don't get the numbers that some other writers do.
This is for people who are thinking of joining Examiner or who already are Examiners and haven't read the fine print. Caveat emptor -- buyer beware -- because you might not be paid, and you might just get paid LESS than a penny a click IF you get paid. Good luck to Examiner in its new form. It's going to need it.

Tomorrow: What's up with Textbroker?