November 16, 2007 9:00

Why don't journalists get residuals?

Albert Kim makes this argument better than I could in the Huffington Post yesterday:

As a writer who's worked both in Hollywood and journalism, it's clear to me that the arguments used to justify residuals in one field could certainly apply in the other. Newspaper and magazine reporters produce stories and the companies that employ them profit from those creative efforts. And just as in Hollywood, those media conglomerates are always on the lookout for ways to (pardon my corporate speak) repurpose their material. Journalism doesn't have as many natural recycling opportunities -- news stories don't really lend themselves to reruns -- but it does happen.

At Sports Illustrated, popular features are often anthologized in hardcover editions with names like SI's Great Baseball Writing. Writers for The New York Times frequently see their articles picked up by other papers around the country. When I was a writer for Entertainment Weekly, my pieces would routinely get republished by other magazines in the Time Inc. empire -- usually international editions like Who Weekly in Australia or Time Asia. And of course all of these outlets post stories from their print edition on the web, which as we've all been told is the shining new frontier when it comes to advertising bucks.

None of that extra revenue trickles back to the writers. So why is it that a system that's considered part of the natural order in Hollywood is so utterly alien in journalism?

The issue, writes Kim, is the long-established pay structure for journalists.

Well for one thing, journalism companies have a legal basis for depriving their writers of residuals -- the "work for hire" principle. Unlike Hollywood writers who are essentially independent contractors, most journalists are salaried employees, with regular paychecks and health benefits and pension plans. As such, the fruits of their labor become the property of their employers. That's the trade-off. Just as an engineer for Intel waives any financial claim to breakthroughs in chip design he makes while on the corporate clock, newspaper and magazine writers forswear any ownership stake in their stories.

Sure, work-for-hire is legal. It's the system that employs much of working America. Still,

...work-for-hire doesn't explain why freelance journalists don't get residuals. Their situation is the one that's the most analogous to writers in Hollywood, yet when a freelancer's work is reused online, or reprinted in an international edition, or syndicated, he or she typically doesn't get a single extra cent.

Not one red cent. I work at the same company that employed Kim for many years, and I can attest to our haphazard policy on this matter, even (or especially?) for staffers. When I was a writer at Money, I would get a small fee—$200, if I recall—if my material was reprinted by the Custom Publishing division. But when a story I wrote also ran in Asiaweek, I saw no payment at all.

Should journalists get residuals?