Not gonna do it (UPDATED)

The woman from the local magazine who wanted me to do her job for her without paying me finally contacted me back after I sent her another email saying that I took her silence to mean that she would not paying me for writing for her little publication.  This was her response to me:

"Actually you won't be writing for our publication. It was an offer for you to talk about yourself and help promote your artwork and use our magazine as a vehicle to do so, but if you do not want to, then that is your prerogative. In the 6 years we've been producing our magazine, we have never been asked to pay for a feature, so thanks, but no thanks. We already have other artists that are willing to send us stories and pictures of their work without need for compensation."

And so I responded by sending her this:"Actually you were asking me to work for your publication. For free. I don't produce any work for corporate media for free. The other artists who are willing to produce articles for you are suckers who have fallen into the trap of providing work for you for free because 'it's good exposure.' Which is bullshit because in this area exposure in publications like yours is meaningless because of the scarcity of art galleries that sell original work at fair prices.

Also, just because your magazine gets distribution, that doesn't mean that people read it. I've seen it and have never ever picked up a copy. It's someone's vanity production."

Then the more I thought about it the more pissed off I got and I sent her this as well:

"I'm still not sure you understand what you are asking of people. So, let me break it down for you, if you get paid for doing work for that magazine, then anyone else who writes for it should get paid as well. It's actually pretty simple. "

I'm not going to link to the publication in question because to do so would give them exposure and if they want me to advertise their product, then they're going to have to pay me. And also because linking them would ruin my perfect record of never viewing their website, along with my never having read one issue of their little magazine.

This incident proves yet again that the local corporate media in my area of east TN is really awful.

Update!
The co publisher of the magazine in question sent me a private message on Facebook telling me the humble beginnings of her little publication and how enlightened they are for not charging artists for doing stories on them. She went on to say a bunch of other horse shit but what it boiled down to was that she's not going to pay me to write for her magazine because she thinks the exposure in her rag is worth more than money. To which I said:

"Of course you don't charge people to do coverage on them, that would be idiotic. But if you pay others to write for your vanity publication, then you'll pay me as well if I write an article for it, even if it's an article on me and my art. Other artists in this area have been cowed into thinking that they should give their work and time away for free in order to get exposure in an area that doesn't value their work. Not me. If you want my work, then you pay me for it. That's a pretty simple idea, one on which our current capitalist system was founded on.

There's no need for you to tell me all about your little magazine's humble beginnings, I don't care about any of that because like I said, I've never found your publication worthy of my time and after being asked to work for free for it, I highly doubt I ever will."

Then after getting counsel and opinions from people I know and respect, I tried to send her another message that said that in any other region of the country a magazine that wanted to do a story about an artist would send out a reporter to do an interview with said artist and then they'd go write an article based on that interview. But in this region where the populace routinely votes against it's own self interest by electing Republicans all the time, where wages are depressed, and where corporations and business cows workers into subservience, magazines like her can get away with expecting people they want to do articles about to work for free for them. I also tried to encourage her to develop a more ethical and responsible business model, but she and her magazine blocked me from sending them private messages and they blocked me from commenting on their little Facebook page.

So once again, the corporate media in this area shows how horrible they are.

Fuck you VIPSeen. And fuck your stupid shitty magazine.