How Does Writing for Patheos (Catholic) Work? Or, Are We Just in it for the Money?

Last updated on: March 30, 2017 at 4:57 pm by David Russell Mosley

How Does Writing for Patheos (Catholic) Work? Or, Are We Just in it for the Money? 2017-03-30T16:57:31-04:00 David Russell Mosley

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David Russell Mosley

Title: Writing Desk
Dimensions: 46 x 45mm (1.8 x 1.8 inches)
Description: Small illustration scanned from the book Rodwell, G. F.: “South by East: Notes of Travel in Southern Europe” (1877). A bearded man sits writing at a mediæval writing desk; there are scrolls in the foreground, and a gargoyle’d trifoliate carving on his bench along with a small statue in the background indicate a monastic or other religious setting.
(Public Domain)

Lent
29 March 2017
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Readers,

Whenever I go to Patheos Catholic’s Facebook page, or whenever I make the mistake of reading comments on most Patheos Catholic blogs, I often see the same thing. Some well-meaning (giving them the benefit of the doubt) Catholic bemoans the kind of content or style allowed on Patheos Catholic. They seem to believe that Patheos Catholic is run like various online magazines (I’m thinking of places like First Things, The Imaginative Conservative, The American Conservative, Ethika Politika, The Distributist Review, etc.). They seem to think that we writers here at Patheos Catholic write our pieces, like this one, submit them to some kind of editor who reads and remarks on them, and then either requires corrections of some sort or passes them on for publication. This, however, is not the case.

Now, I cannot unequivocally state that what I am about to tell you is precisely how every channel at Patheos works, nor that this even how every blog on Patheos Catholic works. Each channel and each blog has its own processes. Sick Pilgrim, for instance, a blog to which I have contributed in the past, is a Patheos Catholic blog with multiple authors. Authors such as myself write a piece, submit to someone else who then posts it (if they’ve edited anything I wrote for anything other than formatting I’ve never noticed). But even then, those pieces are not forwarded to Sam Rocha our channel editor here at Patheos Catholic for perusal before publication.

Rather, what really happens is something more like this: Whether because Rocha (or Elizabeth Scalia before him) came across a piece of our writing (as happened with me) and liked it or because we reached out to him, Sam decides that a particular blog or writer ought to exist on Patheos Catholic. We sign a contract that says we’ll try to keep swearing down to a minimum, not use images that we don’t have the right to use, and to try to write 2-3 times a week; and Bob’s your uncle, we have a blog hosted on Patheos Catholic. And that’s exactly what it is. In that sense, a writer for Patheos Catholic is very little different from anyone with a wordpress account. We just have better advertising and can reach a generally wider audience. Now, you shouldn’t mistake this as Patheos Catholic letting just anyone in. You have to show to our editor that you can write. Those of us who write here passed that test at some point (and yes, we can be removed if we violate our contracts in a rather vicious manner). And I should note that many of us have some kind of advanced degree. I have a PhD in theology, for instance. Others have Masters in theology, or PhDs in English, etc. And that’s not particularly pertinent except to say that we’re not exactly a bunch of idiots. We’ve at least had some kind of training to help us in our writing.

So, before you complain about the kind of things allowed on Patheos Catholic, keep in mind that the writers are the arbiters of what they write. No one tells us what to write, no one monitors to the level the editor of a magazine or newspaper would monitor, what we write. So if you have a problem with the content of “Patheos Catholic” what you really have is a problem with the content of particular writers/blogs.

Second, and what really sparked this, was a comment on Mary Pezzulo’s post about Steve Skojec’s racist tweets/laughter at racist jokes on twitter. The commenter suggested that perhaps Mary wrote this piece for more self-aggrandizing purposes. He wrote, “Or is this a political – prestige and money thing – like so much now in Catholic blogdom?” Now, you can go read Mary’s piece for yourself and see her call into light how a rather public Catholic voice finds incredibly racist jokes funny. I could comment for days on the problems with this commenters ideas about writing blogs. But the chief one I want to address is money.

We who write at Patheos Catholic are not rolling in the dough. Best case scenario right now for making money as a Patheos Writer is as follows: First be designated a tier 1 writer (I have no idea what tier I am). This means you will be paid $3 per 1000 views. Of course, you don’t receive any actual money until you’ve earned $50, which means you’ve reached just over 16,666 views total. Now, a quite popular blog might at Patheos Catholic might reach that in a month, but I doubt most of us are in that category. So, best case scenario is that you have 2-4 times the number of views I average a month––which would mean making roughly $600 a year––and you have readers kind enough to donate whether through your PayPal donate button (like I have in the upper righthand side of the page) or through something like GoFundMe or Patron. But even then, we’re asked in our contracts not to put too much focus on asking people for money. Some people here at Patheos Catholic do manage to make enough to pay their utilities or something, but that’s not the case for most of us. And I should note that this is a recent change. When I first started writing for Patheos, the only way to make money directly from your writing (and not from donations) was to reach a minimum number of views (I think 12500) a month before you’d make any money. And the bottom tier there was about $37.50. And don’t think I say any of this disparagingly. I reach a much greater audience than I ever could have on my own, and that’s connected me with new people I never would have met otherwise. I’m just describing the reality (though do feel free to donate away!).

Now yes, I suppose it’s possible that some of us might start writing more (and maybe even more often than we ought) and possibly on more inflammatory topics in order to get more clicks and make a very little money. But to think that this is our driving force is ludicrous. Those of us who write here do so because we love to write and have been given the opportunity to write for a wider audience. But you’d be wrong to think any of us are in this “for the money” or “for prestige.” If we were, believe me we’d do something else.

Sincerely,
David

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