Commiserating with an ElleGirl Editor, Budget Living Freelancer

Mediabistro’s resident Chicagoan and rock star freelancer Claire Zulkey catches up with ElleGirl senior editor Melissa Walker (pictured) a day after the magazine folded to “bitch” about, among other things, the fate of her four-year feature, “Class of 2008,” for which Zulkey was profiling the lives of selected girls as they went through four years of high school.

“I’ve been there three times,” Walker says, regarding other experiences at Rosie and a dot.com in London. “And it’s kind of nice! Because, when you leave, you don’t feel like you made any bad choices by quitting early or that led you to get fired. And, of course, it frees you up and you get severance.”

Zulkey’s co-blogger, Annie Logue, provides insight from the perspective of a Budget Living freelancer:

Budget Living is paying freelancers 33.2% of what they are owed, rather than stiffing them entirely and saving them the hassle of filing a claim in bankruptcy court. Give them a shoutout for doing the right thing.

The Ballad of the Defunct Magazine Editor [MBToolbox]

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