This tale of incivility will not appear to be unusual to many of the freelancers who submit their work to publications in the hope of getting published, but I thought I'd tell it for those who still harbor aspirations that all editors, publications staff et al are people who do -or try to do- the right thing. They don't.
1. On Sunday June 7th, I photographed the artwork on some of the wooden boards erected to protect SoHo's luxury stores and boutiques on Broome and Greene streets. Some of those were completed while others were still work-in-progress. The gallery of my photographs was uploaded on the morning of June 9th and can be viewed here.
2. A few hours later on June 9th, I emailed the link to The Gothamist, asking the on-line publication, if they were interested in the photographs.
3. Having had no response or acknowledgment to my email the following day, I checked The Gothamist's website and found it had dispatched a photographer to SoHo on June 10th, and published an article with his images at 2:30 pm.
Now, I don't fault The Gothamist for wanting their own photographer's work on its pages, but what I do fault them with is their inability or unwillingness to acknowledge my email and the gallery of images I had sent them. It's the incivility that irks me.
A two-line email saying "Thank you for the submission/suggestion/heads up...nice work...but we prefer to have our own photographer cover this..." or even better, include a link to my gallery in its article.
That's what a nice decent civil person would have done.
End of rant.
