The Complaint Dept.: SPIN City
A writer blows off steam today on a well-known music publication.
The worst experience I ever had freelance wise was with this one editor at Spin. Incidentally, I’ve found that when you turn in a piece and the editor sends back an e-mail that begins “This is a really good start” that is a terrible omen that really means “This is nowhere near what I want. I don’t know what I want, but this sure ain’t it and I’m going to make you jump through hoop after hoop before you even get close to getting anything in our meshugenah publication”. I was supposed to write a piece on the films of the ‘90s for Spin, sort of a year-by-year capsule of representative films that had aged in a really striking and hilarious fashion and I should have known I was in for trouble when she said “How about “The Virgin Suicides”? That’s a really hilarious nineties movie, which I thought was strange since it was set in the 70s and had nothing whatsoever to do with the ‘90’s. I had to re-write that piece maybe ten times and when it finally came out it was so butchered and unrecognizable (I still haven’t been able to bring myself to read it) I realized that I would have made more money collecting a kill fee for the original piece than what I made from the final butchered version. That definitely put me off Spin for a hot minute. Another experience with that editor that sticks out in my mind is when I wrote a piece about abortion and Hip-Hop for Spin and I proposed that I talk to Chuck D for it and she said (total Valley Girl accent) “Like, wouldn’t you rather talk to someone who actually mattered.” Ah, editor from Spin, I hate her guts.
I bet you too have had an unfortunate adventure in freelancing. Send it in on the D.L. (that Anonymous Tip box is not getting enough exercise; see how flabby it looks?) and get it off your chest.
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