In all things in life, you get whatever standard you set. When you lower standards, you will get low quality. The cliched phrase, “you get what you pay for,” applies to journalism as well. As more and more blogs depends on free content (and to be completely open, outside of our grad student contributors, we are one of them), you get lower and lower quality. While some people might argue that the very idea of eyeballs on words scares people into turning in better work, in general, this is not necessarily true. There is a huge difference in the type of writing and reporting you will get if you pay $2 a word versus .20 cents a word—or worse, none.
Part of the problem is that journalists consistently undervalue themselves and their skill set. Freelancers, in particular, are constantly living in fear of rejection, and the way the publishing field is set up, it allows for abuse of the system by publishers. Contracts only guarantee a kill fee if a story is rejected, but nowhere in the contract does it state that the magazine has to kill a story within a reasonable amount of time. I had one friend who wrote a piece for a prominent New York City publication, only to essentially have her story held hostage for half a year. She was lucky that a news event kept her story viable in the interim.