The last several days have been spent finding a way to reclaim a few key articles from Examiner.com. I already received an e-mail from AXS that pretty much confirmed they are not going to help me recover any of my old articles. Thankfully, complete strangers on the internet have given me some good advice on what I could do, and soon I will be sharing those secrets with you. A thought did race through my mind as I was writing my review for "Star Trek Beyond" though, and that thought was "thank God I write for multiple websites." So let's discuss writing for multiple publications, because I think it is something that critics need to do more than ever these days. It used to be that you went to college, got a degree, applied to work for a newspaper, and then wrote exclusively for that newspaper until you either died or moved on to a competing paper.
The times have changed over the years though. Newspapers are dying. Journalism degrees are considered the most useless degrees you can get. The blogosphere has created so much competition that rarely are people aware that there is an actual person writing the articles anymore. That's why so many articles are click bait titled these days; because the subject is what draws eyeballs to sites these days, not the authors. What's more, many of these sites close down and people lose their jobs. The rules have changed. Unless you get a kushy job that pays very well that requires you to write exclusively for them, you need to be freelancing as much as you can. You need to have articles appearing on multiple websites, blogs, and (*gasp*) magazines. You need to do this to get your work out there as much as possible.
You need to do this to insure you have work available. Most of all, though, you need to be on multiple sites should one of them go bankrupt. Companies going under is nothing new. This has been happening for years. It used to be a lot rarer though. In the publishing industry, companies going under due to lack of readership is pretty commonplace now. Long story short, you NEED to have backup places to write! Even your own personal site can go down for one reason or another. What happened with Examiner was frustrating because of the lack of backup I had for the site, but I was also relieved that I didn't put all my eggs in one basket. Sure, it means my reviews I had planned for that site will have to go elsewhere, but at least I have somewhere else to put them.
I wish I had better news for you, but the sad reality is no website, blog, newspaper, or general publication is safe from a public that is becoming increasingly more dumb by the minute. We have to accept that a Twitter photo of Kim Kardashians ass will get more views in five minutes then your archive might in five years. There are only two ways to compete with that. The first thing you can do is dumb yourself (and your content) down to the general publics level. This means either making Marvel movies or writing top ten lists of conflicts kids today will 'just never understand.' Or, keep writing the best you can, just make sure you are doing it for multiple avenues. Since I don't care about the struggles of today's kids as much as others are, I will just continue to try and better my writing. It just won't be on Examiner anymore.
