Is the publication you subscribe to really serving your best interests?
We ran a complaint about a company named Sposa awhile back. Last month, I noticed they were posting “job” listings to one of my colleague’s job boards. I wrote to the owner, who I have known for several years. I alerted her to the job postings Sposa had added to her site and then pointed her to the warning page we have about them on WritersWeekly. You’d think that someone that well-known in our industry, with such a popular newsletter, would go out of her way to remove the job listing by Sposa. She wrote back to me and said she couldn’t edit job listings on her board. I wrote back, asking why she didn’t just delete the listing. She never responded. And, today, not only does the Sposa “job” listing still appear on her site, but they’ve since posted yet another “job” listing there!
Two weeks ago, I noticed a term paper mill running ads on another writing site that has a semi-popular job board. I emailed the owner immediately to alert him that a term paper mill was using his job board to hire writers to help students cheat. He never responded to my email, and the “job” listing is still there as of this writing.
982Press.com has received lots of criticism online and we’ve run warnings about them as well, yet freelancewriting.com allows them to post blind ads to their board, over and over again. Freelancewriting.com also allows term paper mills to post jobs. If that site exists to serve writers, why are they allowing firms that charge writers a fee (and those that help students cheat) post “jobs” to their boards?
Another publisher (getting tired of this yet?) allowed incorrect information to be posted about me several months ago. Since this publisher had a business relationship with me and had even been under contract with me, she knew beyond any doubt that the posting was a lie. However, apparently it was just too much trouble to remove that post. She ruined a good business relationship and lost all my respect for the editorial quality of her site because she was simply too lazy to remove lies from her site. Or, perhaps she was trying to hurt my reputation (since we are competitors, thus allowing the post to remain. Either way, she knew the post contained lies and she refused to take action.
A couple of years ago, Matt, the owner of AuthorsDen, was alerted that Martha Ivery, the nut-case who eventually was closed down by the government, posted racist comments and personal lies about me after we started investigating her firm for WritersWeekly Whispers and Warnings. I contacted Matt at AuthorsDen immediately and requested he remove the offending posts. Even though they were clearly a personal attack on me (claiming I was cheating on my husband, was pregnant by another man, etc.) Matt did not remove the posts. Instead he asked, “What did the author say when you initially contacted them with your removal request?” While he claimed he removed links to the page, the pages still worked, which was, again, completely unacceptable. It was obvious to me that he was not concerned about the racist remarks and obvious personal attacks being waged on his site.
This is just a small examples of the experiences I’ve had. I’m always happy to point out scams, bad posts, and inaccurate information that I find on websites and, despite the fact that I’m trying to help them and their readers, my emails are usually ingored. I can only assume their other readers are being ignored as well.
Writers have a hard enough time making enough money to feed their families without needing to worry about which scams, bad deals and shady characters are being introduced to them by the very websites that were supposedly created to help them. It’s pathetic that some of the major freelance writing sites are too lazy to keep their boards clean and keep the information on their sites accurate.
If you find bad job postings on a site, or repeated postings by firms that you know are taking advantage of writers, I urge you to email the editor, and continue to email them until the job postings are removed. If you find incorrect information about a company online or in an email newsletter, again, email the editor, and don’t stop until they remove or correct the information. If the editor refuses to remove the information or doesn’t acknowledge your emails, stop visiting their site and unsubscribe from their newsletter. After all, if they can’t be bothered with filtering and correcting the information that is supposed to be helping you and all writers, the quality and purpose of their entire operation is in question.
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