Here’s a rant I wrote for my Malus ‘N’ Mayhem blog about four years ago, when I found out that a former “employer” of mine decided to delete some of my articles because…well, actually, it’s explained in the rant below.
Originally published 09/19/2015
WARNING: INCOMING RANT
So, back in 2009, I became the local Retro Gaming Examiner for Examiner.com, a news site populated by up-and-coming would-be journalists and writers who, in many cases, can barely read themselves and can’t string two words together coherently without sounding like third-graders.
Bitter? Yes, I am. Why? Because in recent years, there’s been a shift in management at Examiner.com. Not a big deal in and of itself, though I hate change in all its forms. But the problem is that the new staff has started arbitrarily labeling posts from writers as “not newsworthy” and has taken to “unpublishing” them, basically keeping them away from the public eye.
My review I posted of the 1980 arcade classic Pac-Man isn’t newsworthy due to “irrelevancy”? Thank goodness for editor Joseph Goebbels at Examiner.com, because I had no idea!
When you’re reviewing retro games, calling your article “not newsworthy” is the ultimate in understatement. Even so, it’s the principle of the thing. And while I’ve never really been all that in love with these articles, others seem to have been amused by them, so I’d rather not have them disappear.
That said, while it looks like my articles (which were perfectly fine before) are no longer welcomed on Examiner.com, they’re obviously welcomed on my own blog. So, for the next several weeks, it looks like I will have pretty consistent updates.
While I don’t want to come off as someone who puts payment above all when it comes to creative endeavors (indeed, labors of love comprise almost my entire writing career to this point), looking back on it, working as a freelancer for Examiner.com was an absolute joke. The payment system was bonkers (you got one or two cents per view, and they only paid you once you got $25.00 worth of views so long as you got them within a three or six month amount of time, otherwise the payment tally would reset), and your chances for exposure were slim to none if you tackled any subject that wasn’t LeBron James, Peyton Manning, or who the loser was on last night’s The Bachelor.
I’ve come to appreciate the articles I wrote for Examiner.com over the years, and now see them as having value. My intention for this set of articles (series, if you will) is to post some of my old “lost” work from Examiner.com and add any new perspective I can to it. The series is indeed finite, with only about twenty articles to offer–so it will have a definite end. I intend for each reprinted article to follow my now-typical Throwback Thursday format of presenting the original work betwixt modern commentary and reflection.
If you haven’t read these articles before, hopefully you will enjoy them. If you have, hopefully you will enjoy them still.
– Randall Malus, 07/18/2019
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