No, you shouldn't work for Lady Gaga for $50
... Nor should you give her the rights to your story.
We’re less than a week into February, but already journalists have had to contend with two villains.
The first you’ve probably heard about. His name is Jeff Bezos. He’s the billionaire behind Amazon, a grubstaker of Donald Trump, and the owner of the Washington Post. Once perhaps the most consequential newspaper in the world, WaPo is now on life support. Bezos just fired a third of its staff.
You’ve also heard of the other one. Her stage name is Lady Gaga. She is one of the most lauded and influential pop stars in the world. She is also a songwriter, and because she has written her own lyrics, her wealth is expansive.
Lady Gaga is now soliciting submissions from freelancers for a $50 “volunteer appreciation fee”.
Lady Gaga is the force behind the Born This Way Foundation. The foundation’s mission is “to empower and inspire young people to build a kinder, braver world that supports their mental health.” I’ve read through their income statements and impact reports (and, to be fair, both are well organized and easily found on the foundation’s website). To date, they’ve awarded $5 million in grants to 260 organizations. There are also less tangible things, like 20 million pledged “acts of kindness”. I think what we can conclude from this is that the foundation does some good work, it also engages in some hard-to-measure good intentions. Like most celebrity foundations, it’s probably a mix of its founder’s own good intentions and an efficient vehicle for tax write offs and putting family members on payroll (including Gaga’s mother).
This month, for Black History Month, the Born This Way Foundation is urging young writers to submit their work in exchange for a $50 volunteer appreciation fee. This is audacious, ridiculous, and downright exploitative. And that’s just the beginning. Through this submission, you aren’t just giving up your story in exchange for $50. You are giving it up forever. The foundation will own all rights to this story, in all media, in perpetuity. That includes your physical image, as they can use the headshot that accompanies the article however they like.
Sadly, this is a pretty common contract. It’s also really common to find calls for submissions for Black History Month that pay a pittance. You’ll see the same thing in March for Women’s History Month. What’s less common is for it to come from a foundation that was established and funded by someone who has built their career on being an ally. Gaga sure doesn’t feel so supportive now, does she?
“But it’s for charity!” you might exclaim. Indeed, it is. But I am not a charity, nor are you. A charity is not excluded from paying its electrical bill. Charities do not lowball their website host or their plumber. However, charities always expect writers to work for a pittance since they have a “good cause” to leverage. I wonder if the mental health-promoting Born This Way Foundation has considered the mental health impact of being told your work is invaluable, but you, the worker, are all but worthless.
“But you have to pay your dues!” This comes up all the time when new writers, young writers, or teen writers are offered an outrageously low fee. The expression “paying your dues” comes from a time when you had to literally pay your dues to join a union or an apprentice program. It was a phrase of worker empowerment. You join the cause, and you’ll be part of something that champions you and your labour. Today, “paying your dues” might mean that the junior electrician is always in charge of picking up the coffees for the team or that the newly hired lawyer gets the most annoying files or that the teenage waiter is stuck with the crummiest shift that no one wants. But all of these people are actually PAID. They just don’t have any perks yet.
“But it’s not really Lady Gaga’s decision.” Fair point. I’m sure she’s not in a boardroom cackling about how she’s going to make life for young writers especially humiliating this month. (I can, however, picture Jeff Bezos doing exactly that). However, the tone at any organization is set from the top. If members of her team think it’s cool to offer $50 for an essay which might be 500, 1000, or even 1500 words, they must feel immune to any backlash. (For the record, they should be paying $1 a word, in my opinion. Actually, if you want to really get into it, they should be paying several dollars a word because a buck a word was the standard in the 1980s, and they’re a wildly wealthy foundation that was founded by a writer and focuses on empowering people.)
“But she’s not really asking people to work work for her. People are just invited to share their story, and she’s even giving them a thank you!” Look, you can call it anything you like, but it’s work.
“But you can put a link to your work/your organization/your cause and just think about all the publicity!” NO. We are not doing this. We are not going through the whole “people die of exposure” bullshit that has been circulating forever.
“But Lady Gaga struggled when she was just starting out!” This is perhaps the cruellest thing of all. Her fans are called little monsters, but she must be the real monster if she wants young artists and writers to suffer. I would never want anyone to live through the most difficult and economically perilous moments of my career. Why would she?
“But Lady Gaga really cares about people!” I have no doubt people feel this way and, for all I know, it’s very much true. People have broadly spoken about how her artistry has created a place of joy and safety. She has supported important causes and has been a voice for those in need. But you cannot allow your admiration for someone’s artistry or activism to undercut your own financial stability or artistic worth.
“Boy you really have it in for Lady Gaga”. Actually, not at all. I’m a fan! But I’m struggling to separate the creator from the capitalist.
Its bad enough that the Born This Way Foundation is engaged in the horrifically inappropriate act of requiring people to write and edit for hours, bare their souls about intimate topics related to race, and not even earn enough money to buy a t-shirt from Lady Gaga’s website (most of them are $70, BTW). However, there’s also the issue of rights, which are available for anyone to read on the Born This Way Foundation’s submission form (which I’m not linking to because to hell with that, but if you really want to see, you can put your journalist chops to work and start Googling).
When you sell an essay to the Born This Way Foundation for $50, it owns your words and your story and it can do anything it wants with them. Is it likely that your heartwarming little essay is going to be the kind of thing that inspires a screenplay, a novella or a short film? Probably not. The same goes for everything I write! Yet you never know when and how your words might take off.
Are you familiar with the humour website, McSweeney’s? In 2009, it published Colin Nissan’s essay It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. This gloriously tongue-in-cheek ode to the people who lose their minds with autumn joy is now the second-most-popular piece of content on McSweeney’s website, and it has inspired an entire world of follow-up essays, memes, videos, and actual merchandise. I’m sure you’ve seen this saying on a sweater somewhere. There are even dramatic readings of the essay on YouTube. Every autumn since it was published, Nissan’s essay goes viral.
McSweeney’s didn’t pay Colin Nissan for this work.
Thankfully, Nissan was able to negotiate royalties for the McSweeney-issued decorative gourd mugs. And in fairness, he seems pretty happy to have created this fun material. Good for him! Alas, I wish he was enjoying this happiness in an Italian villa because I’m sure the commercial value of his essay is hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The point here is that anything, from anyone, can go viral, which is really just a way of saying it is perfectly aligned with the nuances of the zeitgeist at precisely the right time. Your work isn’t just artistically valuable. It’s also potentially commercially valuable. McSweeney’s knows it. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation knows it. You should know it.
Have I worked for free? Yep. Have I taken low-paying jobs? Of course. Still do, sometimes. Have I made exceptions for charities? Several times. But I haven’t done so when the job and the cause were bankrolled by one of the world’s richest celebrities.
According to some reports, Lady Gaga is on the cusp of being a billionaire. If that’s true, it’ll be the second thing she has in common with Jeff Bezos.
Don’t let the bastards get you down,
Vanessa