In a perfect world, a Guardian editor would’ve reached out to Sophie offering to edit her original piece and post it on the Guardian site—fully paid.

Instead, a salaried writer has no issue plagiarising her premise because legacy media doesn’t take Substack writing seriously. Yet, there are writers on here whose work is more engaging, more well reasoned and better researched than things I’ve seen churned out in institutions. I have essays on here that I know for a fact would be at home at a top outlet but I am personally exhausted with the politics, dick-swinging, the schmoozing, the endurance of passive-aggression I’ve had to navigate specifically in the non-fiction/journalistic industry because everyone wants to take from you and leave you a husk. They don’t see you—all they care about is whether they can get away with taking your ideas, bargaining internally on whether they’ll have to go through the inconvenience of interacting with you and paying you for your time as if your personhood is a cancerous growth to the intellectual property you provide. If they do end up finding a way to thieve from you, you then have to spend time that you’d rather spend writing trying to strong-arm them, threaten them and get your lick back.

I’m glad they amended the article. They should be blowing up Sophie’s line for guest features.