The Study Hall Guide to Being Ghosted

It’s happened to everyone. Here are some tips.

If you’ve spent time on the internet, you’ve probably been ghosted: you’re chatting with someone remotely, it’s going reasonably well, and then they abruptly cease all communication. The term was first used to describe amorphous romantic relations, but freelance media workers are experts on the subject. To be a freelancer is to perpetually subject oneself to professional ghosting: from editors, from sources, and from accounts payable. 

Ghosting in freelance work contains all the sadness and anxiety of dating-world ghosting, except it sometimes can mean you’ll have to go into debt to pay rent. “Freelancing is such a lonely business, and your whole day can change for better or worse by one email,” says Anna Codrea-Rado, a UK-based freelance journalist and author of The Professional Freelancer newsletter. “Even [an editor] just sending an email acknowledging your existence can turn everything around.”

Freelance writer and author Carlyn Zwarenstein summarized the dynamic to me via Twitter DM: “[Ghosting] happens, it is humiliating and disrespectful, and I don’t know what to do about it except magically not need the editor/publication/$.”

This is the depressing truth of media ghosting. It’s exhausting and embarrassing, but the precariousness of freelance work means that responding to ghosting often requires diplomacy. An angry email could burn a bridge to well-paying work, and while some would argue that’s a bridge worth burning, each freelancer’s situation is different. If an editor has paid you $1 a word in the past, many freelancers will make concessions — like forgiving the ghoster right away — to maintain that link.

For those who opt to blast their ghosting editors via email or social media: sometimes that’s the right call! But North America is experiencing a global pandemic, and editors are living through this too. Patience and nuance are essential when we’re all grieving a million little tragedies. (One freelancer I spoke with mentioned that their editor hadn’t been responding to emails; weeks later, they learned the editor’s parent had died.)

There are many different forms of media ghosting, and the calculus of how to respond differs for each. That’s why we asked a group of freelancers how they’ve experienced ghosting and what strategies they turn to whilst being ghosted. 

THE PITCH GHOST

This is the phase where an editor isn’t even responding to your pitches. There are nuances here — it’s not necessarily ghosting if you’re cold pitching versus emailing an editor with whom you’ve worked before — but regardless, freelancers agree that it sucks to put hours of work into a pitch, then not hear a peep. (This is complicated by the industry’s taboo against double-pitching, or sending a pitch simultaneously to multiple editors, even if you might never hear back.)

Earlier this year, Toronto-based freelance writer and features editor Jesse Locke landed two stories for a major web publication which paid well. He figured he’d begun a fruitful working relationship, but responses to his next pitches slowed. Eventually, the editor stopped responding to his pitches altogether.

“Pitching is time-consuming. It’s work; you have to do a bunch of research, come up with a well-written pitch, and to not receive any kind of explanation…is just frustrating,” Locke says. He keeps a shortlist of alternative outlets for a story “rather than putting all the eggs in one basket,” but the time spent waiting for a reply to a pitch might make a story or scoop outdated or irrelevant.

A simple, quick response from an editor can lessen anxiety. At Canadian music writers’ collective New Feeling, where he is a features editor, Locke tries to maintain transparency with freelancers. “I know how frustrating it is to hear nothing, so I always try to get back to people [who pitch],” he says, even if it’s a pass.

On the freelancer side, Locke tries not to be too naggy, sticking with one-line emails: “Hey! Just checking in about this. If you’re not interested, I would love to bring it elsewhere.” He says this strategy gives people “an out, which might prompt a response as opposed to radio silence.”

THE MID-PITCH/MID-ASSIGNMENT GHOST

You’ve landed a newsy feature, agreed on a contract, and submitted a draft. You close 27 browser tabs and plan what your payment will go towards. You figure your editor will get back to you in a day or two with edits — after all, you worked pretty hard on this, and you have to wait to invoice until it’s published!

Two weeks go by, and you haven’t heard anything. You imagine your piece is sitting in your editor’s inbox collecting dust.

This is what happened to freelance journalist Kelsey Rolfe: She filed a timely story and didn’t hear from her editor for two weeks. Rolfe asked to invoice, hoping it would get her paid quickly and prompt the editor to give the piece a look. It did both. The editor responded within a couple of hours, and Rolfe assumes that the editor was just busy and/or forgetful.

Another situation bothers Rolfe more: the mid-pitch ghost. She pitched an exclusive to an editor with whom she had a good working relationship. After a week of silence, the editor responded to a follow-up nudge with a series of questions. Rolfe responded quickly; another week of silence followed. At the next follow-up, he turned down the story. Rolfe says that the back-and-forth is frustrating. “‘Pretty slow’ is really in the eyes of the beholder, but given that I had an exclusive, I wanted to make sure I placed it without losing the advantage,” she says.

Having worked as an editor before, Rolfe tries to assume good intentions. “A lot of ghosting probably is just the result of editors being really busy, and that’s understandable,” she says. “But the flipside of that is [that] the time that freelancers spend waiting for their pieces to work their way to publication is time that they’re not getting paid. That can be a really frustrating place to be in — and precarious, too, depending on your economic circumstances.”

Rolfe adds that follow-up emails are an unfortunate necessity. “I know there’s a lot more [in progress] than one writer’s piece,” she says. “I know that I’ve been guilty of forgetting to reply to emails, and in those cases I definitely appreciated nudge emails from writers.”

These complications apply to both news and long-lead, evergreen stories. A longtime freelancer, who prefers to remain anonymous, stresses that she understands the psychological strain COVID is doling out to editors, but says that the last ten months have been the worst she’s experienced in all her years as a freelancer. Late last year, an editor with whom she had a friendly professional relationship greenlit a “big idea,” so she started reporting while waiting for a contract. She’s received nothing since, despite four follow-up emails. The repeated string of ghosting is taking its toll.

“I cannot overstate the impact this has had on my mental health,” she says. “I am constantly calculating the probability of a hundred different ways a situation could play out: maybe they’ll email me back and take it; maybe I should start reporting because they usually do take my pitches; maybe I should pitch this elsewhere. What if another editor takes it and then my usual editor resents me for it?…Have I followed up so many times they’re annoyed at me?”

THE PEAK ABSURD GHOSTING

Harlem-based freelance writer Abby Carney shared a timeline of a horror-story-tier ghosting experience that we must share, condensed here.

Carney filed a story in October. After months of follow-ups, “be in touch soon” responses, and finally filing an invoice to move things along, she received a note in January only to say that the outlet pays upon publishing. By August, the editor responded asking for a hefty overhaul. Carney turned it around within a week. Another month passed before the editor responded that edits would be returned within a day. Two more weeks passed.

By the time November rolled around, Carney asked for a kill fee. A new editor got in touch to say they’d be taking over the story, and it was published within a day. She never heard from her original editor again.

Pick up your jaws off the floor and let’s continue!

Carney says that, for her, the issue wasn’t primarily the pay, but having an unfinished task in the ether for over a year. “I felt a bit disrespected and annoyed,” she says.

In other instances, including one where she was ghosted for five months after filing a story, Carney wanted to maintain a relationship with editors, so she tried to not be a bother. “I don’t want to be too demanding or needy or follow up too soon,” says Carney.

Carney also tracks the dates of her follow-up emails to maintain a consistent but “spaced-out pace.” She works around anchor gigs and staggered payments, so chasing invoices isn’t as dire for her as it might be for many freelancers. She adds that “more communication is better, even if it’s not good news” from her editors. “I think setting very clear expectations at the start of a story assignment can go a long way towards avoiding drama for everyone,” she adds. 

THE “UHHH WHERE IS MY CHECK” GHOSTING

UK-based freelance journalist Anna Codrea-Rado thinks that the worst form of ghosting occurs at the payment stage. An editor failing to respond to emails about invoicing can lead to logistics issues with payments, not getting paid on time, or not getting paid at all.

Codrea-Rado says these have compounding consequences. “Clawing back money that you’re owed does carry quite a high mental load, but it also has financial implications,” she says. “Our income comes in sporadically, but our bills are still due on a monthly basis.”

When a payment is late, Codrea-Rado emails weekly follow-ups. Every week, the email gets “slightly more strongly-worded.” “You want to set out in your email that you’ve tried to contact them numerous times before, ask them if there is someone better placed (perhaps in the accounting department) who can help you, and politely but firmly draw their attention to any relevant laws or regulations that protect your payment issues,” she says. “It’s also worth adding a line offering to speak to them on the phone to iron things out. Depending on how severe the situation is, you might want to consider CCing their boss.”

Freelancers in New York City can use the Freelance Isn’t Free Act to claim a late payment fee, but even this involves an investment up front of money and time. The act allows freelancers to claim damages for violations of independent contractor rights, including filing for double the value of the stated project fee if payment is even one day late. Freelancers can file via small claims court or with the city’s Office of Labor Standards.

TL;DR: Everyone, please, please answer your goddamn emails (when you have the capacity 🙂 ).

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