{"id":92497,"date":"2025-09-22T11:05:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T11:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ccmagazine.es\/?p=92497"},"modified":"2026-01-28T15:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:03:16","slug":"all-wrong-editorial-ccmagazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ccmagazine.es\/en\/all-wrong-editorial-ccmagazine\/","title":{"rendered":"All wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cecilia Camacho, Founder and Editor of CC\/magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

We live in an age capable of sending rockets to Mars and creating artificial intelligence that writes poetry \u2014 yet there are still people who fail to grasp the most basic rule of all: work, including creative work, must be paid for.<\/p>\n

Not long ago, I had one of those surreal conversations. After two insistent WhatsApp messages written in a childlike tone and three phone calls, she proposed something “fantastic”: that I write an article about one of her clients. She, of course, would be paid for the commission. I, on the other hand, would not. Apparently, her enthusiasm and the fact that the topic was “very interesting” were meant to be enough as payment. Sad but true.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most unsettling about all this isn\u2019t the audacity, but how normalised it has become \u2014 how some people genuinely believe it\u2019s acceptable to profit from someone else\u2019s talent without paying for it. They wrap it up in the shiny packaging of “opportunity”, dressing it with words like collaboration, visibility or, wait for it, feminism. Because in this case, the proposal came with that all-too-familiar twist: “it\u2019s a feminist topic”<\/em>. And that\u2019s where one draws the line. Because there is nothing more feminist than paying the person you expect to work for you. There is no empowerment without fair pay, and no sisterhood if one is paid and the other is not.<\/p>\n

Even when I was an intern, I got paid. So it\u2019s almost comical that anyone might think that, after years of work, experience and editorial judgement, I\u2019d do it for free. I\u2019ve had collaborators and I\u2019ve always paid them \u2014not out of altruism, but out of something as simple as coherence. Because I believe that creative work \u2014like any other\u2014 deserves respect, value and dignity. And, above all, because I\u2019m convinced that every time we agree to work for free, we perpetuate a culture that rewards cunning and punishes professionalism.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t an unfortunate email or an out-of-place request: it\u2019s an entire culture that confuses collaboration with exploitation, sharing with taking advantage, sisterhood with emotional manipulation \u2014and then disguises it as good intention.
But a culture doesn\u2019t sustain itself: it survives thanks to those who keep it alive. And what\u2019s truly worrying isn\u2019t just the proposals, but the people who make them so naturally, convinced that their behaviour is reasonable, even generous. They say it without shame, hiding behind habit, as if the repetition of abuse somehow made it less abusive. And frankly, I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s common practice in the industry or something that\u2019s become institutionalised over time: it\u2019s still the same thing. Taking advantage of someone else\u2019s work isn\u2019t a professional strategy \u2014it\u2019s a lack of respect. Because asking for free work while getting paid yourself isn\u2019t naivety, it\u2019s calculation. It\u2019s not clumsiness, it\u2019s convenience. And it\u2019s not collaboration, it\u2019s abuse.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s time to start saying it plainly: when someone asks you to work for free while they get paid, they\u2019re not offering you an opportunity \u2014they\u2019re insulting you. And that, in any language, in any era, is called abuse.<\/p>\n

(*)<\/strong> Image: Bigshowlamar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cecilia Camacho, Founder and Editor of CC\/magazine We live in an age capable of sending rockets to Mars and creating artificial intelligence that writes poetry \u2014 yet there are still people who fail to grasp the most basic rule of all: work, including creative work, must be paid for. Not long ago, I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5964,5916],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial-en","category-inspiration-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAll wrong<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 21st century seems to have everything \u2014except ethics. 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