A recession of writing and creativity

Things are going to be bad for awhile

fortherock CC BY-SA 2.0

Dear Moss People,

It’s not often that I break from the weekly rotation of New England hiking storytelling, but today, I decided it was time to write a special missive to all of you—a letter that I’ve been drafting in my head for the last few months.

This week, National Geographic is laying off its entire staff writer division. I learned the shocking news through a tweet from one of those staff writers, Craig Welch. But maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked. Because, you see, National Geographic was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 2017. And in recent years, publicly traded corporations such as Disney have ramped up their efforts to slash costs and boost their shareholder values. In almost every instance, the “fat” that’s been targeted for excision is the creative workforce: the people who produce the media we consume.

As a freelance journalist and author—and until now, a regular contributor to NatGeo—I’ve been in the media business long enough to know that things have been moving in this direction for a couple of decades. But lately, this degradation has escalated. The Writer’s Guild of America strike that you’ve probably heard about is the logical result of streaming companies like Netflix moving away from the model of paying writers commensurate fees and residual royalties for their labor. You also may have heard that BuzzFeed News got rid of its entire Pulitzer-winning newsroom staff, with the intent of pivoting to AI-generated “content.” These events are part of a clear trend.

The word “content” is increasingly used to describe all forms of media. But I don’t think most of us would think of our favorite books, movies, or albums as “content.” That’s a word that you’d use for all the digested food sitting in your colon: not a creative work that’s meant something to you. Alas, the devaluation of writing and broader creativity by C-suite types is part of an attempt to cheaply replicate what professional creatives do, by using artificial intelligence and underpaid contractors to do the work, and hoping that most audiences won’t be able to tell the difference.

Or that they won’t care.

An algorithm, or someone being paid ten bucks an hour to write three articles per day, can tell you what the Maine boglands look like. But they can’t tell you how they smell, what memories they evoke, or what it feels like to see a congregation of dark clouds on the horizon. And I do have faith that in the long run, audiences will appreciate that difference. But in the short term, you are going to see more and more creatives disappearing from the landscape and pivoting toward other ventures. Because for now, media publishers are going to try and boost their bottom lines by getting rid of the creative workforce. Until that gamble fails—until audiences demand better “content”—we are going to experience a recession of writing and creativity.

As anyone with a creative bone in their body knows, the advent of a recession does not mean that writers and all creatives are going to stop practicing their crafts altogether. But it does mean that making a living from those crafts is going to become exceedingly difficult: possibly for at least a few years. And increasingly, many of us will attempt to weather the storm by pulling back from the traditional publishing landscape and cultivating our own audience on platforms like this one.

The storm that’s coming for creatives has been brewing for a while, and I would be a lot more anxious about it without the support and enthusiasm that so many of you have shown for MIND THE MOSS since I launched the newsletter back in the summer of 2021. Since writing that inaugural story about Hamilton Falls in the Green Mountains, I’ve met several of you out in the field, I’ve found inspiration for future stories in ideas that many of you have sent to me, and thanks to a great number of you who have subscribed and paid for the newsletter, I have been able to treat MIND THE MOSS as a part-time job. At a time when there are fewer and fewer opportunities for writers and creatives to be paid well for their labor, this means so much to me.

In the long run, the resurgence of labor unions and the possibility of sectoral unions forming and extending membership freelance workers seems to offer the most hope for creatives. But for now, the path forward is going to involve bypassing corporate publishers and directly supporting the creators whose works we appreciate. Whether it’s buying a print from an illustrator, getting the latest album from your favorite band from Bandcamp instead of streaming it on Spotify, or subscribing to independent newsletters, this is how we keep creativity on life support during the recession.

I have no illusions that this model will yield the same dividends for creatives that the industrial model once afforded many of us. But in the short term, it’s something. And for a lot of us, it could be the difference between continuing to create, and throwing in the towel and finding another job. A couple of months ago, I read a story about an Emmy-winning TV writer who ended up taking a part-time gig at a movie theater to supplement their dwindling income and residuals. This may surprise you, but again, this is where the media industry has been heading for quite some time.

So thank you for making MIND THE MOSS possible—for demonstrating that audiences can and will directly support writing that means something to them. Things are going to be pretty bad for awhile. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. But in this corner of New England, things will be a little greener, more fragrant, and mossier.

~Miles

James P. Mann CC BY 2.0