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Hey Nathan,

Published onApr 02, 2017
Hey Nathan,

Hey Nathan,

Fwiw, I want to apologize for my part in that story. I loved your work and loved editing it when I had a chance to, and I’m horrified to learn you weren’t paid for it. As a staff writer, I had little insight into the arrangement you had with FC, but in hindsight, I should have done more to understand the agreements of the people I was asked to edit. And I could have certainly been better at communicating, as you suggest. I don’t think anyone I worked with at FC had bad intentions, but I do think the Labs project in particular wasn’t particularly well organized or supported (and I certainly played a part in that), which lead to a lot of problems like this. That’s not really excusable, especially at FC’s level, and again, I’m really sorry it was a negative experience for you.

I’m glad you’ve found a way to write that works for you, because your writing is great, and I suspect helps a lot of people (as it has long helped me). For my part, I’m starting a media co myself now, and trying to learn the right lessons from your experience and others I’ve had since. We’re trying to be as transparent as possible about payment, licensing, funding, etc., pay people quickly and simply, and our entire mission is to help our writers (scientists in this case) learn to communicate and build an audience — not just build our brand with their work.

I’m not sure if that’s comforting to know or not. But I did want to apologize, hearing your side, and let you know I’m learning and trying not to repeat the same mistakes.

Also, I’m checking out Highrise for our co. to help manage relationships with scientists, which are getting unwieldy and could lead to bad communication like what you described if we don’t find a solution soon. It’s on my radar because of your continued great writing.

Gabe

By Gabriel Stein on April 2, 2017.

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Exported from Medium on October 22, 2020.

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