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Thread
Freelance writers, how do you feel about brands removing you as the author of an article after they've updated it? Fair? Not fair? Depends on how big the update was?
It was not a ghostwriting contract, and every contract should be prone to legal backing. A contract remains a contract.
Unless the website decides to shut down, the authorship credit is supposed to remain. If a contract isn't signed, then anything unfair can happen.
Not fair but depends on the contract. I love having my own pieces in my portfolio and that’s the biggest issue for me. Had a case where I applied for a full time job recently and had the hiring manager and CEO wonder why the articles I submitted were under someone else’s name
As more businesses realize the value of updating existing content, I think we can expect this to happen more often. Losing a byline is always disappointing, but I never really question the fairness since it seems inevitable.
I do try to capture (ie save to a pdf) content with my byline in case it goes away at some point. That way I can still include it in my portfolio.
Also I recently had the opposite experience, where I updated an existing post with a complete rewrite. The original author is still credited for the article even though they only wrote 1% of the content 🙃
I’ve updated previously created content from an agency that wasn’t attributed to an individual writer and simply attributed it to a generalized Contributor author since I wasn’t sure the name of who wrote it.
In some cases, when you’re working with a group of writers via an agency, part of the contract can be that you can’t (as the Head of Content or Managing Editor of the blog) attribute the piece to the writer. Even if you’d like to. It’s a part of the organization protecting their writers from being stolen. So, again in those cases I used a generalized “Contributor” title.
It sucks, but it happens all the time. Just make sure to screen-capture all your articles with bylines for your portfolio in case things change.
@Koa Elder or rather, protecting their contract from being stolen by the writer.
@Anna Sonnenberg Sorry, completely missed notifications for this thread. I do have pdfs of everything. It's a good reminder to keep making them.
Thanks everyone for your input! I'm sorry I'm replying so late to all of this. Completely missed notifications for this thread.