Complaint Review: Examiner.com - Internet

Prophetic Alert: the mark of a cult: http://www.propheticalert.org/markofacult.htm

1) relies on big name for attracting

2) uses big name to exert authority

3) exploits writers financially (by paying them pennies which is what a gossip column is worth but not in investigative piece)

4) vascillating ambiguous policies; they absented the community forum and any form of normal healthy human interaction, only offering critical review feedback; you don't even earn a reference from them.

5) guru type prophet; big name again used to support the absence of reference or human resources for independent writers;

6) you are required to atone for yourself through a ranking based on output. Some of the number ones by the way are really enslaved cranks, such as they just suscribe to the Department of Education website and spew out new articles based paraphrasing their latest news, just to stay at the top.

7) exclusivity from other groups; they expect that you will not be sharing your contributions elsewhere, although you can if you cite it from the examiner.com; but the exclusivity is also based on sites like Wikipedia (itself not exactly whitelist) claiming examiner.com writers are full of bunk. but the new examiner.com editorial policy means that some people are invited to the whitelist (no review needed), while others are not, is completely arbitrary. You can have a masters degree in English/Journalism, and other qualifications and still not be on their whitelist, no matter if you have worked with them for years, maybe because you are not white or any one of a number of things. It's arbitrary because your same respectable article published elsewhere is not subject to numerous editorial reviews likely by some intern or bored overpaid marketer. You don't know who the reviewers are because they don't tell you, and all the reviewer does is pick away at what they think ought to be improved, no compliments, no encouragement.

8) So yes, your articles, no matter how much experience or qualifications are defective and in need of repeated editing if they say so.

9) false view of religion; the ads basically speak for themselves; but also the trash that is promoted and hyped up at the expense of quality journalism and investigative reporting. Look at this vampire trash: http://www.examiner.com/topic/waiting-sucks; 

10) entangling organizational structure; they rely on gimmicks, especially peer pressure to keep you writing like a slave. Oh, will your ranking drop from the top twenty down to the hundreds? Or, oh, look at so-and-so hack crank who reads popular mechanics or PC world and paraphrases their news on a daily basis. and, oh, how many facebooks clicks and likes did you earn?

11) Fake community. It has no community anymore; when I joined they had a healthy community forum where you could read about and commiserate on issues with other examiners. They purposely did away with it. Mostly they rely on you finding your way about from Examiner university and a lot of self-help pull down menus. Examiner university would be a great place to have a social site but they purposely neglect that. They used to have an open ticketing system, but these days, it is harder and harder to find. It's buried somewhere amid all their question and answer.

12) So you, you end up feeling STARVED for healthy human interaction, for sharing, for support. Aren't you near like a slave? Instead, you must just write, write, write----and now with the added price of edit, edit, edit, just to be heard. Of course they want to keep up appearances, and so their journalist addicts (who are always sort of photogenic and/or connected) will help them keep it all up---they need it for 2016.

I hate to turn on them this way. It really wasn't all bad, in fact, my writing confidence has improved, and so has my style to a certain extent. It's not that I really mind being edited--if only they had already fostered a more congenial atmosphere. I mean, the world of journalism has become so sad that they are closing journalism departments left and right, and so people should realize that there are newbies who will still try to give the Examiner.com a shot, and still be overjoyed when their first article comes out. And I really do wish them all the best.

And since it's too late for any repercussion I hope, here's this open letter:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s533/sh/023e7956-34bb-41f0-8033-a27ef9a76ff7/36079dddddfbfe3abc0aa2f048580f91