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Topic: Any Consumer Reports experiences?
| Author | Message |
| recovering_jersey_girl | Posted – 7/30/2007 10:22:06 AM | show profile | email poster I just picked up a copy of Consumer Reports' new magazine, ShopSmart, and I'm putting together a pitch for them. (No, this isn't a query for contact info; I already called and got the vital stats for the editor who handles freelancers.) What I'd like to know is if anybody has experience writing for this organization. I know they are ad-free and expect that they have pretty strict ethics rules, but I'm wondering about more prosaic stuff: Do they pay well? Quickly? Should I expect requests for multiple rewrites? Thanks very much. |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 7/30/2007 12:04:43 PM | show profile In my experience, they pay about $1.50 a word and are very, very demanding to write for. Yes, multiple rewrites can be the norm, and they can be very tough on sourcing. In most magazines, for instance, one or two good sources is enough. That may not work for CS, though, because often they don't attribute information and they want a voice of total authority. For one piece for them, I had to go an ungodly amount of research to verify a controversial sentence. I did about 10 pieces for them, but for me, I didn't enjoy it. It was a lot of demanding work, the pay was nothing special, and the work I was doing didn't carry a byline even. |
