Mediabistro.com on contributing editors: "gigs with teeth"

Mediabistro.com, the career center for freelancers and other media types, just published an illuminating article about contributing editors, and I’m not just saying that because I was interviewed for the story.

The article, “Between Freelancer and Staffer: Contributing Editors,” by E.B. “Liza” Boyd, explains how the title means different things at different publications but for the most part, bestows the writers who hold it with more leverage and a fatter paycheck than otherwise unattached freelancers. She calls the jobs “gigs with teeth.”

In my case, I’ve been a contributing editor a couple of times for a couple different publications, each a little different. Here’s how Boyd covered it in her story:

In the heady days of the dot-com boom, when tech publications and Web sites were cropping up left and right, Michelle Rafter enjoyed a monthly retainer from the Industry Standard simply to be available to write for them and to prevent her from lending her talents to competitors. Today she is one of a handful of contributing editors at the trade publication Workforce Management. There is no contract, but the arrangement means her pitches get editors’ attention, and she gets first dibs on stories not written in-house. “It saves a lot of marketing time,” Rafter says.

If you’re a Mediabistro AvantGuild subscriber you can read the entire article here. If you’re not a member, the fee to join AvantGuild is $59 for a year or $97 for two. Read more about it here.

Boyd is a San Francisco-based freelance writer who covers sustainability, psychology and the media. She also blogs about the future of the news business at Future of News. Read her LinkedIn profile here.

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