Notes from a Hired Pen: No, reporters don’t need your “consent” to publish a story

Readers!

 

 

On Friday, the Phillies released outfield Nick Castellanos. It was not an unexpected move. He just didn’t seem to give a shit anymore after he was benched for some unknown reason in June. Five minutes before the announcement, he posted a hand written not on his Instagram thanking the city, but also then addressing that incident.

He wrote that a story was bout to come out about it, without his “consent.”

Bullshit.

No journalism outfit needs “consent” before publishing a story. Reporter Matt Gelb did his job in getting multiple people to talk — on the record — about what happened. If Castellanos didn’t want to talk to Gelb, that’s his prerogative, but that doesn’t mean that The New York Times (which The Athletic is but without a union contract for its writers I said what I said!) wouldn’t publish. Maybe he watches too much CBS. But someone who has interacted with the media just about every day of his professional life should know that, even if he didn’t have team media people hovering around.

If, as a freelancer, you do other types of writing, that’s not always the case. For example, if a car company hires you to write a profile of an executive for their car company branded magazine, they most likely will want to have some say in the end result. Same with alumni magazines. If you’re writing about someone associated with the organization that signs your check, it’s marketing, not journalism. That goes for people who write for corporations too, like MLB.com (again, I said what I said!)

And that’s fine! I have also written for more than a few car and alumni magazines in my 20+ years of freelancing. I don’t think I could make as much money as I do now on strictly journalism work.

But I know the difference, and I don’t let anyone push me around when my journalist hat is firmly on. Lord knows they’ve tried, including one last week. The PR person wanted to “approve” what companies I mentioned in an article for a business publication. LOL to them. I said I’d go call someone else unless they backed off that demand, which they did. Smart move.

Perhaps Castellanos got a little too comfortable talking to friendly media faces (the plague of access journalism is another story for another day), and that if he’d kept it at bay that long, the full story would never come out. But he can’t stop a newspaper from publishing a piece like that. And we shouldn’t let unhappy sources stop us from doing our jobs either.

 

What I’m Reading

• Sourdough by Robin Sloan. A woman is stuck in a teach job that is eating her alive. Her one bright spot? Ordering food from a pair of brothers who make the best sourdough bread she’s ever had in her life. When they leave the country, they leave some of the sourdough starter with her, and that’s when things get weird. Like Sloan’s previous novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, there’s a haze of the supernatural here, but not enough that I would call this outright sci-fi. I enjoyed it, and have recommended it to a lot of people since finishing it. I also happened to start the novel when I found out there’s a woman in my town who sells sourdough loaves from her house every Saturday. My life is better for it.
• Enshitification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow, read by the author. This is a soup to nuts look about why everything on or connected to the internet sucks right now, and about how tech monopolies mean that these companies can capture you as a customer, and make their product worse, knowing you really have no where else to go. As someone who refuses to put smart devices, appliances or speakers into her home, and still physically connects her computer with a cable to her printer because she do not want the internet involved in the process, this spoke to me. But one drawback (and this is going to be a long aside so buckle in): He cites the work of Veena Dubal, who has done research about exploitative algorithms related to gig-work apps, which was good! But she has taken these findings and extrapolated them to all independent contractors — people like you and me and Doctorow because he sometimes writes for U.S.-based publications, and decided we’re all exploited and should no longer be able to work this way. She was a driving force behind California’s abhorrent AB5, which essentially made all independent contract work illegal, and was such a mess in the real world where the rest of us live that lawmakers had to go back and add 18 exemptions. I consider it a highlight of my career that I helped stop similar legislation from passing in N.J. And yet she still threw her weight behind the PRO Act, which would federalize that legislation despite needing to be fixed for 18 groups of people in California. Later in the book, Doctorow puts himself into the category of “middle class writer” and then talks about other people who are “gig workers.” Sorry, Cory, but according to Dubal, you’re a gig worker too, and you need her legislation to be “saved.” See why distinctions must be made? Not that she listens, as she has blocked me and everyone else who has pointed out that lumping all 1099 workers together is probably a bad idea. But she has fooled many writers this way — not just Doctorow but also anyone associated with “unions” that say they’re of “freelancers,” which cannot exist per U.S. labor laws. And now I will hop off my soap box.

What I’m Watching

• Surviving Ohio State. This documentary is a thorough investigation of how sexual abuse was known about and allowed to run rampant through men’s sports at The Ohio State University. Richard Strauss, a team doctor, sexually assaulted at least 177 boys and young men (and at least one peer, who cried on camera recalling what happened) between 1978 and 1998. I’m glad some of the now middle aged men came forward to testify and speak in this documentary, but I am disgusted with how they are treated. Then assistant wrestling coach and now and STILL!!!!! U.S. Congressman Jim Jordan has said the men were lying, and then tried to silence some of the people involved when the dam was about to break. The school still hasn’t paid the victims, and and is trying to get their case thrown out. And then after this documentary came out, news broke via that an OSU Medical Center gynecologist worked for Jeffrey Epstein. I came to the realization that institutions cannot be trusted when the Catholic Church abuse cases came to light (and the dioceses where I worshiped and went to school still also has not paid victims because they declared bankruptcy to try to get out of it and oh yeah paid a lot of money to lawyers to try to stop an investigation into abuse). But these repeated reminders aren’t helping.
• Roofman. This is one hell of a based on a true story, about Jeffrey Manchester (played by Channing Tatum), who got the nickname “The Roofman” because he would drop into McDonalds through their roofs to rob them. He then breaks out of prison and ihdes out in a Toys ‘R Us. The team here did an excellent job of portraying Manchester as neither a villain or a hero. You’re supposed to be conflicted about him. I knew how it ended because the podcast Criminal did a two-parter on Manchester, which I also recommend.
• The Cult Behind the Killer. In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children. She was portrayed as a monster. But, 25 years later, this documentary looks back at what drove her to it, which was a mix of patriarchy that told her she must have as many children as possible, even after she almost died by suicide after the death of her fourth child, lack of mental health options when her husband tried to get her help, and a fundamentalist cult. Her husband got a lot of grief for supporting her after she was arrested, but I don’t think he was wrong. The cult is still ongoing, because of course it is. People love to shame women, and salivate at preachers who tell us we’re bad.
• Hotel Portofino, season 2. And we’re back with our rich English toffs at a hotel in 1920s Portofino. The pacing of this show is funny. It’s all RICH PEOPLE SCHEME AND BOINKING then MUSSOLINI and then COSA NOSTRA DON’T FORGET ABOUT US! thrown in. And that’s fine. I don’t need all of my historical melodramas to be high brow. I realized watching this season that we’re supposed to think the Faro di Portofino i.e. the Portofino Lighthouse, is the hotel. Sure, why not! I will watch season 3.
• The Longest Day. When I finished Saving Private Ryan, a bunch of people told me I had to watch The Longest Day, the three-hour, 1962 movie about D-Day. And y’all were right. Despite this movie being made 36 years earlier, with 36 years earlier technology, I still cried when the Allied Troops landed on the beach. I am going to be a MESS when I actually go. This absolutely earned its three hour length because it told different points of view, and even had three directors: one for the British and French scenes, one for the American scenes, and one for the German scenes. They also spliced in real life footage. Someone on Reddit said most of the actors are too old for their parts, but if WW II veterans wanted to be in the movie about the war, like Joseph Lowe who was at D-Day and landed on Omaha Beach, that’s fine with me. As with seeing/reading most WW II stuff, I want some of these terrible people in our country right now to watch this and tell me they for sure would have been on the right side. Because I think/hope deep down, they know they would not. I’m never going to not be mad that 60 to 75 million people died (and millions more who lived but would never be the same, like my grandfather) to defeat fascism only for a bunch of assholes to usher it right back in. Yes I’m mad. I think I have every right to be.

 

Nail Polish of the Week

Cupid’s Beau by Essie. We finally got above freezing last week, and I was feeling excited about THE SUN, so an orange red it is!

 

Until next time!

Jen A. Miller (she/her)

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