This is Why Faith is a Bad Thing …
Back in February of this year, I blogged about a PWAC (Professional Writers Association of Canada), Toronto chapter, seminar I’d attended, about journalistic opportunities in “new media“.
Among the speakers was Wilf Dinnick, who presented to a room full of freelancers in various stages of bewilderment, desperation, and angst about the state of their careers, a strong and irrepressibly optimistic case for embracing markets such as OpenFile, which he founded and edited.
In late September, OpenFile ceased publication. (If you click the above link, you’ll see the most recent stories were posted September 28, at least as of the moment I posted this.)
And guess what? A whole bunch of freelancers haven’t been paid, and Wilf has stopped communicating with them.
I wonder if it’s too late to apprentice as a ditch-digger or something.
Here are the gory details, including the open letter written to OpenFile by six Montreal-based contributors who would really like some answers, please:
http://www.thestoryboard.ca/openfile-freelancers-post-open-letter-to-wilf-dinnick/
Writing From the Right Side of the Stall 
This type of thing seems to be happening more and more. It is truly sad that an entire industry has been butchered. Those of us attempting to eke out some subsistence as self-employed freelancers seem to be doomed.
Should you find gainful employment as a ditch digger etc., please let me know. I may join you, citing years of experience mucking stables.
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I’m trying to decide whether things really were just peachy at OpenFile in February, as Dinnick asserted, or whether he really did accept an invite to sell his ‘opportunity’ to a bunch of hungry and stressed-out freelancers with full knowledge that it was circling the drain. Nothing’s sacred anymore …
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fact is when things are going wrong in your world they seem to attract a wealth of wrongness.. is it a mathematical formula that is written in blood that bad news is never alone.. not sure but hopefully as it always seems to have a formula requiring the mount of depressing news any one person can handle hopefully your number is up and things will get better soon.
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