Art Fag City is expanding. As many of you may have noticed, we’ve been taking on more contributors and producing more in-depth stories, reviews, and interviews. That expansion is going to continue, not just on our site, but on The L Magazine as well. Today I take on the role of Art Editor for the magazine, which means you’ll be seeing the AFC brand on more places than just the blog. Longtime AFC contributors Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch will be writing regular news stories for the L, and Will Brand will contribute to the Art Fag City column, which will now be published weekly, as opposed to bi-monthly.
What does that mean for AFC readers? Mostly, it means you’ll have a lot more to read by writers you already know you like. We like what we do. As of today, we’re going to be doing more of it.
UPDATE: Many of you had questions about whether Art Fag City will remain the same. The answer is no. As of yesterday we doubled our publishing. Here’s the statement I sent to ArtInfo and the Art Observer:
Technically speaking my role at the L Magazine won’t be too much different than what I’ve been doing for them already. I’m in charge of the art direction there — so I’ll be assigning stories and overseeing the tone of the coverage — but the actual amount I’ll be writing won’t change. In fact, the actual amount of editing I’ll do won’t change that much either. The L Magazine has their own editors (though of course I’ll approve whatever goes out to them).
The blog effectively doubled its size today, so you’ll be seeing more AFC, not less. Some of our regular contributors will have a new venue at the L Magazine. Since none of them were full time here to begin with (save for Will Brand), this just means we have more work we can give our contributors. I think that’s a great opportunity both for the blog and our writers.
Speaking to this, you’ll notice that Art Fag City content is linked at the bottom of every art related L Magazine post and vice versa. At it’s heart, this is a media partnership, wrapped in a editorial title.
{ 17 comments }
Woah.
Fantastic. Bring it on! Congrats Paddy J!!! (artnet closes. artfagcity expands. thanks for taking up the slack)
As some one who has rallied against the exploitation of the
worker, I hope you’re planning on unionizing all your workers, and providing
them with the same wages, pensions, and healthcare
benefits that you’ve demanded from others.
Thanks for your comment James, though it seems a bit misplaced. As I mentioned above, this is really a media partnership wrapped in an editorial title. It has nothing to do with what we pay our staff and I have no control over what The L Magazine pays.
That said, while our staff size doesn’t require a union at this point, we of course hope to get to that point. And yes, actually, we have written wages, pensions and healthcare into our future budgets. We’re not Sotheby’s though and we don’t have millions in surpluses to work with. So, while I’m flattered by the comparison, I don’t think it’s at all comparable.
I’ll send over a union rep asap (AFL-CIO
http://www.aflcio.org/ or National Writers Guild
http://www.nwu.org/ ?). It’s better to get theses issues started on the right track from the beginning. I’m sure you’d be proud to show the folks at Sotheby’s how its done.
I’ll make a note somewhere that we can’t have opinions about social justice until we make more money. Thanks for that.
Besides which, you’re drawing a false comparison.
With Sotheby’s, we stood with a group of workers who had publicly voice complaints. Someone had an issue, and we listened to them, and we decided we were on their side.
You, on the other hand, are making up a conflict out of thin air. To my knowledge, none of our writers have complained about how we run things here at AFC. You are speaking for them, without their agreement, to score argument points. If you’d like to actually ask some of our writers how they feel, and then take a stance that has something to do with the reality of the situation, I’m sure you’ll find all their emails are very public. They’re right there in the sidebar. Until then, leave us alone.
Paddy’s a freelancer, just like the rest of us. You can’t ask one freelancer to unionize another freelancer. If she were Paddy, Inc., then this might be an issue.
Whenever there is one exploited art writer, that’s one too many exploited art writers. Profits over people?
Congrats guys. This means you aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Even though you didn’t post a lot of my comments—R. Em…, yeah it’s me… ;P I make it a practice of checking in almost everyday. I don’t have an MFA and won’t be getting one because of the costs so the blogs are my education. Keep it up!
Are you saying the Art Fag City is locking out the unions?
LOL I’ve raised this before. I’d like to know if writers for Art Fag City and Hyperallergic get a cut from Nectar Ads. After all, they fuel the content. If only Paddy and Hrag — and the other blog leaders, if you will — benefit…. well… WTF.
But then… I’m speaking as an art blogger who has never worked for less than $1000 a month when writing for others under independent contract. I’ll do guest posts for free…. but that is about it.
Honestly, I don’t get why you guys continually harass me about AFC about this. You know I haven’t gotten paid a cent for years. You know that the amount of money we get from nectar ads at this time couldn’t possibly pay my wages, let alone anyone else’s. You know that we have built paying ourselves and our contributors fairly into our business plan. You know that we actively work to help contributors looking for work in jobs. Still, the conclusions you draw from information that has been repeatedly shared with you is that we are a ruthless media outlet, that is hell bent on exploiting our contributors. We are hypocrites for supporting the art handlers union, and we should inflict a union upon ourselves so we could finally understand just how bad they really are.
We’ve spent an enormous amount of time trying to understand these issues. I’ve privately met with countless people about how to run a non-profit effectively. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time speaking with handler’s union and Sotheby’s. I’ve done this to make sure that the goals we have for the blog are feasible and to make sure our rationale on labor issues is solid and made clear to the public.
I just don’t know how to lay out this information in a way in which I’m heard. It seems there’s literally nothing I can do to satisfy your complaints short of never using contributors until we receive an enormous trust. But even many of the large commercial blogs you seem to align us with don’t do that.
I wish I was born with the funding of Louise Blouin but I wasn’t. As a result, we have to work with a business plan that reflects the money we actually have.
And as a taxpayer who enjoys the deductions available when working under independent contract. 🙂
No one is doubting your passion.
I know. I wasn’t talking about passion. I was talking about how I feel I’m not being heard, a point made further evident by your response.
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