Going Public: Should Freelancers Take Late Payment Disputes To Social Media?

A few months ago, I wrote an article for a large online publication. I sent an invoice to the commissioning editor the next day, who passed it on to the finance department. Several weeks went by and I didn’t get paid. I followed up four times and received many apologies from the commissioning editor. Yet the £150 fee was still not forthcoming.

Having been freelancing on and off since early 2022, like many freelancers, I’m used to late invoices; this was not the first time I’ve not been paid on time. But this incident was so incredibly frustrating I decided to air my grievance on X, formerly known as Twitter, banking that no publication wants to end up with a reputation as a late payer. Approximately one million people saw my post and I was paid the day after.

For freelance journalists, one of the perils of the job has always been the time wasted in chasing payments for commissioned articles, and 2024 has seen several reporters taking to X to publicly call out publications who have not paid them for their work. A cost-of-living crisis coupled with a precarious journalism industry can leave freelancers feeling their options for recourse are limited when clients fail to pay them on time — but does naming and shaming work for everyone? And would those who’ve done it recommend it?

‘When It’s A Small Amount Of Money, It Often Feels Particularly Insulting’

I’m certainly not the only one who’s taken a payment dispute to social media to pressure a publication into paying them. Alex* is a full-time freelance journalist who has worked regularly with the same publication for the last few years. When they first began writing for the publication, they were consistently paid on time, but this year things haven’t gone so smoothly.

“Every time they were late, they’d apologise and pay me the next day, so this year I don’t know what’s happening; every single payment has been a few weeks late, if not more,” Alex says. “This time they were telling me: ‘Oh it’ll be on the next payroll,’ and then the next payroll would come around and I wouldn’t be paid, and then it would just be this cycle.”

The process of repeatedly following up on unpaid invoices can be demoralising for writers. “I used to be like: ‘Oh my god this is so rude.’ And then there comes a point where you can’t be feeling that way any more,” Alex adds. They were reluctant to post about the lack of payment for fear of jeopardising future work, but having exhausted other options and owed approximately £500 from multiple invoices, decided it was worth a try.

Alex’s since-deleted post detailing their frustrations with the publication not paying them followed weeks of emails to the editor and finance department. On the day of posting, they had emailed three times and heard nothing back, but received a message within 40 minutes of going to social media saying that they would be paid the next day, which they were.

Ralph Jones had a similar experience. After writing an article on how freelance journalism is becoming increasingly unviable for Press Gazette, he found that five months down the line he still hadn’t been paid the £250 he was owed. “I think when it’s a small amount of money it often feels particularly insulting because you’re spending just as long chasing the money as you did writing the piece,” Ralph says. He took to X, got an overwhelming response from other frustrated freelancers, and was paid the next day.

Press Gazette acknowledged this in an article about late payments at HuffPost UK, stating: “Press Gazette itself was criticised on X/Twitter this month for not having paid a freelancer five months after they contributed a piece that was in part about late payments to freelancers. Press Gazette apologised to the freelancer concerned for the late payment, which was caused by an administration error, and the individual has now been paid.”

For some journalists though, the process drags on even longer. For Flo Lloyd Hughes, a freelance sports journalist who was commissioned to write a cover story for a big publication in late 2022, payment took more than a year.

Speaking to Journo Resources, she says: “I was really excited about doing it, it was a massive story with Josh Cavallo, one of the few male players in the global [football] game to be out, and he’s a huge LGBTQ role model.”

Flo says she submitted her invoice soon after the piece was published, yet months went by without payment. She added interest to the original invoice, as well as threatening to take the publication to the Small Claims, yet this had no effect, so she took to X as a last resort.

“Obviously, as a freelancer, there’s always that risk about potentially harming any work that I might do with them or other companies in the future, but I realised the trust has completely broken down now. I don’t want to work with them ever again because I wouldn’t trust that I’d get paid,” Flo says. Flo also left comments under the publication’s Instagram posts: “I didn’t really know what else to do. It seemed a bit petty, but often these really public things are what actually shames people into doing something.”

In a similar experience to Alex and Ralph’s, shortly after Flo posted, the newspaper paid her, approximately 18 months after the initial publication. However, as she alludes, it may burn your bridges with the publication entirely. While Alex is still regularly writing for the publication they mentioned online, Ralph hasn’t written for Press Gazette since and wrote in his thread he’d had a similar experience when calling out a previous outlet he’d mentioned online.

Think Carefully About What You Post

It’s clear posting online can be useful in some cases as a means of speeding up late payments, but Mike Holderness, editor of The Freelance — an online magazine published by the NUJ — recommends following procedure as much as you can: “[You should be] engaging with the accounts department, rather than the editor, with extreme politeness. Invoice for interest and compensation. If you do call a company out publicly, you may or may not be burning your boats there.”

He also emphasises: “Do not suggest that a company may be insolvent [online] unless you have the paperwork that says so in your hand, that’s effectively defamatory.” Joining a union like the NUJ can also help by providing support, advice, and representation — it can also show a client that a freelancer knows their rights and has the backing to act on them.

Andy Chamberlain, Director of Policy at IPSE, adds: “If you’re thinking about taking to social media to put pressure on a client to pay up, your patience has probably worn thin already. But you should still be professional and courteous in your communications, and avoid disclosing anything confidential about your client’s business or the work you completed.”

Donna Ferguson (L) of Women in Journalism and Andy Chamberlain (R) of IPSE

Andy emphasises that writers should minimise the potential for public damage to their own reputation: “Bear in mind that onlookers will form a judgement about you as a professional — and what it’s like to work with you — based on how you handle the situation. And if there’s a dispute over the quality or timeliness of your work, there’s the possibility that your client could push back on your claims publicly, potentially putting you in a worse position.”

Time For Change And Better Standards

However, the power imbalance between freelancers and publications is clear — it’s one of the reasons freelancers take to social media in the first place, as an attempt to claw back control. It’s part of the reason why Women in Journalism has published new guidelines for editors working with freelancers, led by committee member Donna Ferguson.  Developed in conjunction with Freelancing for Journalists, the UK’s largest freelance journalism community, and journalist, author, and advocate Anna Codrea-Rado, the guidelines cover freelancer rights and best-practice for pitching, writing, and payment — including rate transparency, kill fees, payment process, and late payments.

Donna, who’s also a freelance journalist herself, says that the guidelines are important because of the powerlessness of freelancers in a very competitive industry. “It’s so personal,” she tells Journo Resources. “If you put a foot wrong, not necessarily in your copy, but in the way you behave about getting paid or anything, they potentially won’t use you again. What we want to do with these guidelines is to empower freelancers.”

While useful as a last resort (and not specifically recommended) calling out publications for late payment on social media can give isolated freelance journalists an otherwise lacking form of collective power. While posting on X in frustration ultimately resulted in getting paid, it’s not something I plan on doing again. However, feeling the solidarity of hundreds of others was a hugely validating experience. It’s time to use this energy to push for better standards to help all freelancers get paid on time, without risking it online.

* Name has been changed at the request of the interviewee, who didn’t want to jeopardise future work.