Valleywag writers don't know what they're getting paid
Unless this is an elaborate and strange April Fools Day prank (always possible on this Day Where All Truths Must Be Twice Overlooked) Valleywag writer Jordan Golson brings us a surprisingly revealing behind-the-scenes story called “It’s April 1 and I don’t know what my salary is.”
Valleywag, “Silicon Valley’s tech gossip rag,” is a Gawker Media site. Other Gawker sites include Gawker, Defamer, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker. Gawker Media was founded by Nick Denton, who is worth $290 million, as quoted by a Mahalo entry.
Golson explains the process of how Gawker writers get paid:
Gawker writers are each assigned a “Monthly Base” pay. No matter how much traffic their posts generate in a month, writers will receive at least their base. On top of that, productive writers can receive a “Pageview Bonus,” which varies depending on which site they write for. All Gawker sites are assigned a “pageview rate”. Any amount of traffic a writer generates over their minimum is paid as “bonus.” By comparing their monthly base to the pageview rate of their site, a writer can determine how many pageviews they need to generate per month or, if they exceed their minimum, how much they’re getting paid in total. A leaked memo explains the whole process in great detail.
Sounds like a pretty reasonable system of compensation if you accept the notion that a paid writing gig on the Internet is worth how many page views it can snag. However, Golson goes on to explain that although “Valleywag’s writers have soundly beaten their minimum post counts all three months we’ve had this program in effect,” the base rate is going to be slashed starting today, April 1.
The newsworthy thing about it is that while Golson and the Valleywag staff know that their base pay is getting cut as of today, they don’t know by how much. Golson:
If a potential advertiser asked Gawker to start running its ads and promised to negotiate terms later, they’d be laughed out of the room — but that is exactly what the company is asking of its writers. If I were a salesperson, I’d expect to know my quarterly sales goals well in advance.
Probably the most interesting aspect of this story is that Golson was allowed to publish this piece on Valleywag, a publication that makes no bones at all about prying deeply into the personal lives of tech industry folk. Kudos to them for being as transparent as they expect their typical subjects to be.
If you’re a Valleywag writer today, how (un)motivated are you to bust out on the techie gossip?
And next question is: does Nick Denton care one way or the other?
