This whole The Kitchn explosion (and remind me to tell them how annoying it is that they can’t spell kitchen properly) took me by surprise. So for those of you sending me tweets in confusion, here’s an overview of what happened.

The Kitchn: “Our standard post rate is $12/post”
Yesterday, The Kitchen tweeted “I’m looking for a few good bloggers. Yep, TheKitchn.com is HIRING.” So I contacted Faith, the managing editor, and asked “What does it pay?” She wrote “Our standard post rate is $12/post.”

I figured other people were curious, too, so I tweeted their standard rate.

Backpedalling
First thing this morning, I got an email from The Kitchn. They said they were “… particularly distressed by this tweet: The someone who does write for The Kitchn at $12/pop doesn’t value writers and demeans all writers. But they don’t care.”

It also said I may “…have the facts wrong.” This email was, also, from Faith. My source for the facts.

Shame on you
“$12/post is not a living wage.” I said in my response. “$12/post is less than minimum wage. $12/post is less than you pay your janitor. $12/post is considerably less than you are paid every week.”

I said “You are not distressed because I spoke the truth; you are distressed because I spoke the truth on Twitter. Shame on you.”

Explosion
And then Twitter exploded with tons of tweets including this one from the insightful @JackieBaisa: “Boo. That equals about $4/hr (under minimum wage) as it usually takes me 3 hours to write a blog post. LAME.”

The Kitchn’s response: “Of course we do not pay a living wage.”
We know.

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