No wonder people have been leaving.
Urgh :/
This isnt a pretty story.
EGM, a magazine to which I was asked to contribute, hasnt paid me the full amount for stories which appeared in the magazine and online. Other stories I wrote for them were paid far past the one month stated in their contract as well.
Now for over seven months, I have been trying to persuade my editors there to write a check for pieces I penned about Sonys DC Universe Online. Ive sent gentlemanly emails. Recently, Ive sent firm emails. Most recently, Ive sent angry emails. Nothing works.
I even tried to contact the publisher, Steve B. Harris, via Facebook. Were friends on Facebook. He never responded. And the business person there, Jodi Bonestroo, didnt respond, either. Emails to executive editor Brady Fiechter, have also gone unanswered.
Each time I talk to Paul Semel, the original assigning editor, he seems bemused. Semels a good guy and Ive known him for a long time. Hes said hed contact Brady about it. If he had the power, Semel would cut me a check himself.
But he doesnt. Yet Brady does have the power to get it done. Publisher Steve B. Harris certainly does.
EGM has gone through some tough times recently. They lost Patrick Klepek. And they also lost Sterling McGarvey. And they Andrew Pfister as well. All three are good, talented game journalists who left G4TV to go to EGM.
I can only conclude that the way EGM is run from the top down has become a complete, utter, stinking mess. Over the years, Ive been lucky enough to have written for almost every publication imaginable from Vanity Fair to The New York Times to small but potent blogs.
But Ive never run into a non-payment situation that has gone on this long. Im pretty sure it wont happen again. Few in my long history of journalism have been this callous. There has been one other. This is the second.
Writers rarely write publicly about their woes with editors and publishers. Theres the chance of getting blacklisted. Ive never written about something like this before myself, not in the last month, the last year or in the last decade.
But I felt I had to write something. I founded the New York Videogame Critics Circle last year and promised to fight for writers rights.
And in my narrative history of videogames, All Your Base Are Belong to Us, I give a tip of the hat to hardworking game journalists everywhere. So I had to speak up.
Theres just never any excuse for welching on a contract. If you dont have the money to pay writers and to treat them with respect you shouldnt be in business.
And if you dont answer your writers emails, you dont care about writers.
And if you dont care about writers and EGM doesnt seem to you should find another job.
EGM owes me $500, $400 for the stories, and $100 for expenses. (There were more expenses. But I thought I was part of a crew that cared as much about me as I cared about them. So I charged them half of what I actually incurred.) Id love to think theyll pay.
But they probably wont. Ill probably have to take them to small claims court in Los Angeles. If they do pony up, Ill write about it.
Yet its not the money, either. $500 isnt going to change my life. Its about caring about your writers enough to pay them for their craft. Its about honesty, too.
If youre thinking of writing for EGM, do think about the possibility that EGM might not pay up when you send an invoice. If personal experience is any indication, the people in charge dont seem to care about their writers one iota.
-Harold Goldberg
Urgh :/