Writers tend to keep their thoughts in the realm of ideas rather than calculate the seemingly mundane matter of the mechanics of the trade. However, a few months ago I sat down in a Chinese restaurant with a friend of mine who writes for the New Yorker and we agreed to leave our narrative musings to the side and think about practicalities. We were going to try to figure out how much the printed word is worth in America today.
Read MoreI’m not sure when it started, but there’s a dangerous trend in the publishing industry to leech value from a writer’s work and make it almost impossible to earn a real living off of journalism. Yes, yes, we all know that media revenues are declining and even 100 year-old publications like The New Republic are teetering on the verge of extinction. For freelance journalists this has meant a general decline in word rates from a high in 1999 of $5/word at the top publications to as a low as $0.50/word at once-mighty institutions. Some publications now only pay their writers base on per-click, which as the venerable Erin Biba once said “is bullshit“.
Read MoreI don’t write novels, but this morning I got a message from the website Webucator asking me for my thoughts on National Novel Writing Month. In particular they wanted to know what it means to write for a living. Regular readers will remember that I recently published a short ebook on the freelance writing career path called The Quick and Dirty Guide to Freelance Writing about how to attain that elusive dream of quitting your day job and working for yourself. So, perhaps, they wondered, I could share a few thoughts on how to write for a living.
Read MoreListen to the CBC’s coverage of “The Red Market” where I talk bone thieves, blood farmers and things that go bump in the night.
Read MoreTavis Smiley who has one of the most thought provoking talk shows on television, had me on to talk about how red market transactions disproportionately affect poor people and send flesh up the human supply chain.
Read MoreNeed a Kidney? A Skull? Just Bring CashMichiko Kakutani June 16 2011Whereas black markets trade in illegal goods like guns and drugs, the “red market,” the journalist Scott Carney says in his revealing if somewhat scattershot new book, trades in human flesh — in kidneys and other organs, in human corneas, blood, bones and eggs. Many of the real-life examples he cites in this chilling volume cannot help but remind the reader of a horror movie, or of Kazuo Ishiguro’s devastating dystopian novel “Never Let Me Go” (2005), in which we learn that a group of children are clones who have been raised to “donate” replacement body parts.
Read MoreInvasion of the Body SnatchersKidneys are the most popular — bought and sold on the global black market at a rate of at least 20,000 per year. Blood, tissue, skin, corneas and eggs are also highly valued. Human bones are a centuries-old mainstay.
Read MoreJournalist Scott Carney figures he’s worth about $250,000, but that number isn’t based on his savings or his assets; it’s what Carney thinks his body would fetch if it were broken down into individual parts and sold on what he calls the “red market.” In his new book, also called The Red Market, Carney explores the shadowy but lucrative global marketplace for blood, bones and organs. He tells NPR’s Melissa Block that despite being underground, there’s no question the red market is thriving. “It’s really hard to get accurate figures on what the illegal market is on body parts, but I’m figuring it’s definitely in the billions of dollars,” Carney says.
Read MoreFor six years I didn’t only collect stories from people who supplied their flesh on the red market. I also took pictures. Here is a small set of photos that appeared in the book. Above is Fatima whose daughter Zabeen was kidnapped from a slum in Chennai and sold to an Australian family through a network of unwitting adoption agencies. Please don’t reproduce these without my permission.
Read MoreSince 2000 more than 10,000 people have died and 150,000 displaced by a Maoist insurgancy in India. In 2007 I traveled to Chhattisgarh, India with Jason Miklian to report how a police-funded civilian counter insurgency called “Salwa Judum” had only made the conflict worse. Now with warlords, communist ideologues and out of control military forces there are few places for civilians to find safety. While this story never appeared in a major publication, a later version that traced the connections between the mining industry and Maoism appeared in Foreign Policy in September 2010 under the title “Fire in the Hole”
Read MoreCan a tattoo stop a bullet? A centuries old thai tattoo tradition teaches that indeed, the sacred scriptures can have protective powers. In 2007 I traveled to the remote wat bang pra temple to interview the artistic masters who have spent their lives perfecting the art. I reported the story for National Public Radio which you can listen to here. But what what is a radio story without great photos?
Read MoreDuring the mid-2000s, Scott Carney was living in southern India and teaching American anthropology students on their semester abroad when one of his charges died, apparently a suicide. For two days, he watched over her body while the provincial police investigated her death, reporters bribed their way into the morgue to photograph the newsworthy corpse, local doctors performed an autopsy, and ice had to be rounded up to retard decomposition. Finally, his boss asked Carney to take pictures of the girl’s mangled remains for analysis by forensic experts back in the States.
Read MoreBangladesh shares a border with only two other countries: the republic of India and the dictatorship of Burma. With climate change threatening much of the low-lying country refugees will have to go somewhere. And India has decided to prepare for the influx by building a wall and shooting anyone who tries to cross it. In January 2011 I traveled to Bangladesh and India with Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher on an assignment for Foreign Policy.
Read MoreThe age of calligraphy died when British soldiers toppled the Mughal courts. It’s hard to remember that there was a time before the age of computers when penmanship was considered one of the highest art forms. Outside of a some particularly ornate wedding invitations and hand-written copies of the Koran there is little need for formally trained Urdu calligraphers. That is, except for one small ink-stained corner of Chennai where the world’s last hand written newspaper still churns out 20,000 broad sheets a day.
Read More
