Tam Harbert

Some days it seems like a neutron bomb has exploded across the country and I, sitting in the basement bunker that is my office, am the only person left. I reach out to the world, but get no response. My e-mails vanish into the ether. I don’t know whether they are being received or ignored. My voice mails start to sound a bit lonely and desperate, like a high school nerd trying to find a date. I call Comcast just to make sure the broadband connection is still up. Never reaching a real person (which is not unusual when you call Comcast) increases my paranoia.

There is no deep, dark conspiracy behind these days when no one is out there. They just happen, out of the blue, like when solar flares knock out satellite communications. I’m fairly sure that everyone has days like this, but since I work alone my overactive imagination can get the better of me. Maybe some horrid rumor is circulating and everyone – editors, sources, colleagues and friends – has decided to blackball me. Or I remember 9/11, when I was oblivious to what was happening in the world until my best friend e-mailed me one short, curt message: “Are you OK?”

I tune in to NPR just to make sure.

I roust my dog from his afternoon slumber, just to get a rise out of someone. Then I do the one thing that always guarantees an end to the silence: I take the rest of the day off. I used to be annoyed when I’d return to dozens of e-mail replies and returned phone calls, as if everyone had waited until they knew I was out of the office. But I’ve learned to chuckle at the cosmic joke. And be thankful that people still want to talk with me after all. And start again tomorrow.

In technology, there is a well-known marketing technique called FUD, which stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. By playing on customers’ insecurities about doing things differently (i.e. buying from a different vendor), you keep them buying your products and services.

After spending the last year helping my son through the college application process, I’m convinced that the higher education industry engages in its own version of FUD. Starting in the ninth grade, and often even earlier, colleges, universities, school counselors and others start sowing fear in the minds of students: Fear that they won’t be good enough to get into a good college, or any college for that matter. They bombard students, and parents, with e-mails, meetings and automated phone messages about the importance of good grades, doing research to find the best college for you, spending time visiting college fairs and college campuses, working on those college applications, applying for scholarships and – ironically – not stressing out about the whole process.

I used to denigrate parents that got all caught up in this. But that was before my son hit junior year, when the campaign really ramps up, on its way to a fit of frenzy in the fall of senior year. On top of all the propaganda from the high school, which has a vested interest in perpetuating this in order to achieve statistics that will bolster its own status (“65 percent of our students go on to Ivy League schools!”), we also got a deluge of snail mail and e-mail from the colleges, the College Board (which administers the SAT test), test prep companies and consultants who advise parents on how to get their kids into the right college and how to pay for it. (One consultant who offered me a “free” consultation was really just selling life insurance.)

I’ve known we were being manipulated all along, but I’ve been swept away with the rest of them. We’ve spent thousands of dollars and several weeks on college visits, SAT prep courses and training/preparation to compete for scholarships. My son spent every Sunday from September through January on college applications and related work. It’s taken its toll: he is weary and his grades have suffered. I felt like I was working a second job, staying up late to file the incredible amount of forms to apply for various scholarships and financial aid.

In the end, he got into all five schools to which he applied. He got very attractive scholarship offers from his two top choices. Now he’s trying to decide.

In retrospect, the most useful part of this process was the college visits. That was worth the investment and the time. As for all the rest, I doubt that it helped much. In the end, I think he would’ve gotten the same results without all the frenzy. But I can’t be sure. That’s the FUD, and so it goes on. There are a lot of people who benefit from this horrible system. Unfortunately, students and their parents are not among them.

A couple of years ago I was approached by a woman who was looking for freelancers for a new magazine. We talked at length about the magazine’s target reader and the tone it was going to take. I even ventured a couple of story ideas, which she liked. Then we finally got around to talking about money. She told me what she was paying and asked me if that was in my ballpark.

I was so surprised that I blurted out: “Not only is that not in my ballpark, it’s not even in my state!”

Needless to say, she never called again.

I’ve learned to broach the subject of fees a lot earlier in discussions with potential clients, to avoid wasting my time and theirs. This has become even more important with the proliferation of websites that pay would-be writers nil or pennies per hit just to blather on about a given topic. This has given some inexperienced publishers the impression that writers are, quite literally, a dime a dozen. Would-be, novice writers are. Professional journalists are not.

Freelance pay rates have always been a tricky equation for both editor and writer. I know because I’ve spent more than half of my career as an editor. I know how hard it is to find and hire good, reliable writers but stay within a limited (and these days continually shrinking) budget. I also know how valuable a good freelancer can be.

Most editors need freelancers who can do more than just write well, although that’s the first prerequisite. Writers must be able to follow specific directions. They also need to be able to do the opposite: work with vague, general assignments from editors who either don’t know what they want or are not very good at communicating it. Freelancers need the background and experience to know how to report a story and to be able to shift gears (in consultation with the editor, of course) if the information doesn’t fit with the original notion (if there was one). Finally, freelance writers must be able to meet deadlines, take criticism (constructive or not) and be willing to revise a story if it doesn’t hit the mark.

Editors that try to get by with paying the lowest fees won’t get all, or any, of the above. They will typically spend so much time trying to manage the writer and then editing, revising and even rewriting the article that it costs them twice what it would have if they paid a good writer a fair wage. Most editors, including myself, know this. And that’s why good writers, including myself, will want to know upfront if the assignment is going to pay enough to be worth their time.