Tag: covid19

We’re In This Together: Climbing Magazine’s Contributor’s Fund

Climbing

Freelancers are the lifeblood of the outdoor media industry, but COVID-19 has shrunk journalism budgets across the board. Climbing Magazine, which gets about 75% of their content from contributors, is keeping up the work, and even doling out cash.


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“You do it because you love it, or you have to, like a compulsion.”

Those words, and variations of, have been shared with me time and again from freelance writers, photographers and artists. Through grins and contemplative stares, over beers and across Zoom calls, the sub-text is that you don’t do it for the money.

The inner drive buttresses morale through tough times, but when work dries up, cash helps too.

For over 50 years, Climbing Magazine has been leading the way. Thanks to a new initiative by the publisher, they are giving a portion of their revenues directly to freelancers through their Climbing Contributor’s Fund (CCF). During April and May, 25% of proceeds from new Summit Memberships are apportioned to the fund. For every 50 signups, $500 gets doled out.

I spoke with Matt Samet, the Editor at Climbing, and Kevin Riley, Associate Publisher, to learn more about their new effort, the only one of its kind in the industry.


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Author: How did the idea for the fund come about?

Matt Samet (MS): This was all Kevin Riley’s, idea. He goes on long trail runs and does these epic solo brainstorming sessions and comes back with tons of great ideas. Almost makes me wish I was still a runner! 

Anyway, when the COVID-19 closures hit and everyone was sent home from work, we at Climbing all saw these effects trickle down pretty quickly, especially in the form of our many beloved freelancers. I’ve been a freelancer on and off myself over the years, and you’re always hustling, always saying “Yes” to any and all gigs because you don’t know when you’ll hit a dry spell. 

With the economy basically put on pause, we knew there would be a big dry spell for many of our contributors, who are often piecing together a living with multiple gigs, including contributing to the magazine. We wanted to do whatever we could, while at the same time encouraging more people to sign up for our Summit Membership, which in turn supports our staff to work with freelancers to develop our content.

Why do you feel this is important to do as a publisher? 

Kevin Riley (KR): Helen Keller said, “Alone, we can do little; together, we can do much.” 

Climbing reaches over 1M people across its platforms, giving it the unique ability to galvanize the community to help the writers, photographers, and artists that make climbing (and Climbing) so special. As climbers, we take care of our own and many climbing contributors are facing difficult financial situations right now. Sure, being a climbing writer or photographer might sound glamourous, but the truth is it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice to do what they do.

Each issue of Climbing Magazine features about 75% of its content from freelancers. Photo source: Climbing Magazine


Can you talk about the role that freelancers play for Climbing? 

MS: I reckon that 75 percent or so of our content comes from freelancers, who are out in the field, writing, shooting, creating video, and creating all this original content. 

We are able to create some content ourselves here, too, being based in a climbing center like Boulder, Colorado, and with the three of us on staff—me, Kevin Riley, and Digital Editor, Kevin Corrigan—all being passionate writers (and the two Kevins are great photographers). But because we work in a deadline-based industry, we’re chained to our desks much of the time, so there’s only so much we can do from here. We rely on our network of freelancers to bring us the goods from all over the world.

How do you fund this?

KR: The CCF is funded through the Summit subscription. 

The important difference is that we committed to expediate payments to contributors, so they get checks in their hands right away. We decided to allocate a portion of Summit Membership sales to CCF because it had the best potential to raise funds while CCF recipients could provide exclusive content for Summit Members as a token of gratitude.

How has response been from readers and the larger climbing community?

MS: So far, it’s been great. Our first contribution went to the photographer and photo editor, Irene Yee (@LadyLockoff), who’s based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is an amazing talent and someone we work with often. 

Irene created a video sharing her processes for both photo selection and editing in Lightroom, using shots from The Firewall in Liming, China—it’s a very cool behind-the-scenes look at a photographer’s process from hanging in the harness, shooting photos, to editing, to publication, and a great resource for anyone interested in climbing photography.


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If you enjoy climbing and adventure stories, consider signing up to become a Summit Member with Climbing (which includes a bevy of other goodies) or sign up for a subscription to another publisher to help assure they continue to operate (and provide work for freelancers). Adventure Journal, Sidetracked, Rock and Ice, Alpinist and others widely use freelancers for content.

Are you a freelancer? 
Here are a few additional resources for those in the outdoor media industry:

Feature photo source: Climbing Magazine

Bright Lights Across a Dark Space: Angst in the Time of Corona

Reflection

I hemmed and hawed and let the cursor hover over the buy button.

Returning to the U.S. didn’t feel great, but staying in Mexico seemed unwise.

After a layover in DFW and the first American-made IPA in almost half a year, the plane touched down in Boston. That was over a month ago. How time flies.

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Life’s been up and down, like the arc of a return journey or my sense of security throughout the week. At first it was concern about personal safety. Then money, then long-term prospects, then the big why? Like moving up Maslow’s hierarchy of angst. 

Things have settled a bit, as muddy water does when left alone. Too much action agitates the mental pot which circulates the noetic debris, if you’ll allow the metaphor. Sometimes you just have to let things sit. So I’ve been trying to sit with it.

It, as in freelancing, which I’ve been doing for 1.33 years now. A year and a half sounds more impressive, but that’s a lot of rounding up when the total number is small. So 1.33 it is.

There are questions about whether this can work. From many accounts it’s a fraught existence. You do it because you love it, or couldn’t do anything else, or you have a trust fund. You certainly don’t do it for the money. 

Money isn’t the be-all-end-all, but it matters when you’re getting to an age where whether you want to have a family in the future starts factoring into personal finance. 

If I had started in my 20s it’d be easer to ride the wave, I think. In your 30s, when many others are now rising in their careers, buying homes, having kids, it makes one think twice about the path and the prospects of your career choices. 

After all, writing and journalism isn’t a make it big vocation. Hell, it’s barely a make $50k a year occupation.

I’ve been telling myself I’d give it three years. But a pandemic didn’t really factor into that. Thank GOD for PUA or I’d be SOL. So I’m sitting.

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Then it was the future. There’s a lot of high-minded talk about the importance of journalism for democracy. But high praise isn’t pocketable and newsrooms have been going barren for the past twenty years. Orgs are making it work, like the NYTimes, but I know publishers in my domain are having a hard go like many others. 

Journalism also seems untenable when it relies on the likes of Jeff Bezos to swoop in to save the WSJ, or leaders around the world flout the truth and disparage the searching minds and mouthpieces that express it. And of course the trend of #FakeNews.

But I like it—writing— so I started to think I should diversity my beat, look for market opportunities, have contingency plans. There are internships and jobs, grants and fellowships, grad school and the like. But at the end of the day it mostly made me want to look into the bottom of a hole, tail feathers up. So I’m sitting.

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When I was younger I used to think life was easy. It seems like it’s gotten harder over the years. 

Depending on your glare, the world looks ablaze or bleak. There are bright spots sure, like solar flares ripping through the vacuumed nothingness firing energy like uncoiled punches saying, “bring it on!”

Those bursts are the good and true and the universal. They are what make you breathe again and feel proud to be part of the human condition. 

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The other night meteorites scorched through the night sky. I slept through it. But I knew the glittering lights were there.

Because I’ve been sitting with it.

Feature photo by Luca Iaconelli on Unsplash