If anybody has ever asked you to make some form of media for them, you are probably going to relate to this comic.
This says a lot about the status of Art and the creative industries in our society. Only recently are they becoming considered seriously as jobs, or worthy professions. However, there is still a lot of question surrounding how we pay for creative goods and services. This is something which has been discussed by Lobato and Thomas in their book The Informal Media Economy. They touched on the conception of sites such as freelancer and elance where people can be paid virtual peanuts to do media work which should be considered highly paid skilled work. Therefore its time to consider how a formalization can be put in place to make the payment and product consistent. Because one of the current issues is that its a global market, this means that work can be outsourced to third world countries where the minimum wage is less. Normalizing however does come with its own set of issues. One of the advantages of having such a low level of payment is that entry level media professionals can provide an average quality of work in order to build their portfolio. However, if a formal process was put in place it would create barriers of entry to the student starting out in the business. Thus perhaps a solution could be that different spaces are created for professionals and students. But then the question is. Would the students get work?
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