For years, The Link has unremittingly stressed that we have a problem. For 45 years, our necessary work in holding Concordia’s administration and student unions accountable depends on extractive work conditions and the burnout of our editors and contributors. Our staff are required to work upwards of 25 hours per week with little to no compensation. This has resulted in our masthead population consisting solely of those economically privileged and those willing to wear themselves thin by juggling numerous financial and academic responsibilities.

In the last volume, we launched the contributor freelance fund and started paying our editors a fairer wage—but both are temporary pilot projects. The project acknowledges a masthead position at The Link for what it is: A part-time job, a full-time commitment. Editors and contributors from diverse backgrounds could work and pay their bills. This pilot project has continued into Vol. 45, but will die without external funding. 

Our financial support is 23 years out of date. The funding inherited per semester from the undergraduate student body reflects the consumer price index of 2001, with our fee-levy currently at $0.19 CAD per credit per student—not including those who opt-out. Funding appropriate for costs relevant two decades ago is not enough to pay our staff and contributors for their work.

We attempted to run for a fee-levy increase four times. In the face of austerity and a precarious political climate, we’ve been denied despite stressing what is at stake.

Hear us when we say we need your help. 

The denial of an increase suggests an assumption that The Link has enough funding to function. This is the type of thinking that leads to our demise and nurtures a breeding ground for under-compensated labour. The notion that freelancing should remain “volunteer work” is additionally harmful and a blatant disregard for the fruitful labour writers do.

In Yasmin Nair’s 2015 Vox article entitled   “I’m a freelance writer. I refuse to work for free,” she argues for the importance of proper compensation for independent journalists. 

“The publishing industry gets away with conditions that would be considered grounds for litigation in most other workplaces,” Nair writes. “Writing is considered a mere hobby, and awful pay, combined with issues like non-payment, is rampant in the publishing industry [….] What possesses anyone who even halfheartedly claims to be a writer to willfully sabotage their fellow writers’ careers? What does it mean when even leftist writers, writers who aggressively advocate against the exploitation of workers elsewhere, nonetheless become scabs in the publishing world?” 

The Link wants to be a place that uplifts writers and multimedia creators and shows them they are talented enough to carve out a career for themselves. 

The disaster of Vol. 43—felt individually by freelancers daily and student journalists nationwide—is a prime example of the environment perpetuated by underpaying your contributors and your staff. Vol. 43 saw seven editor resignations, partly due to unsustainable working conditions. 

We cannot revert to this exploitative model wherein each masthead member who resigned departed expressing the sentiment, “I am not paid enough for this.” In this perpetuation of a work culture where only the most privileged could participate, The Link became a white-dominated space in which racism, ignorance and insensitivity against Black, Indigenous and people of colour writers and editors festered.  

All current masthead members were asked if they could do their jobs with little to no compensation. The resounding answer is a decisive no.

The Link was extractive to its staff and writers for 43 years until the publication as a whole reached its wit’s end. Our freelance fund, we found, is in part a remedy to the problem, yet without external funding, the fund will remain a pilot project pending expiration. The freelance fund is single-handedly keeping The Link afloat by ensuring we never revert to being an exploitative newspaper.

 The Link acknowledges that a freelance fund such as ours is rare amongst student newsrooms nationwide. Student publications often must treat their staff and contributors as volunteers, where occasionally, a select few receive a negligible stipend for their hard work. This is not the fault of student papers; rather, the institutional framework of universities is to blame. Freelance work is not a donation. Freelance work should not be volunteered; it’s a craft, it’s a talent, and it’s a job.

As a student-led community newspaper that caters to the broader Montreal community, The Link benefits and serves McGill students—and in fact, some of our contributors attend McGill. We are calling on McGill students to equally consider our fight for a fairer industry. The Link might not be dead, but without external funding and support from our community, it will cease to be an ethical workplace that produces ethical, advocacy-centred content—so it might as well be.

This is not an aggrandizing statement; it is a cry for help.

The Link has added a donation box to our website to help keep us alive. All profits will ensure our continuity and pay our staff and contributors