Value =/= 0
Stray Thoughts
At the end of 2023, I received a batch email from an editor asking for end-of-year coverage. The email included a request for personal essays exploring how 2023 had changed how I watch films.
In response, I pitched that the incipient COVID-19 pandemic and the collective apathy with which so many treat it meant I had seen two films at the cinema in 2023. As a culture critic, that doing something as simple as going to the cinema has been rendered dangerous has not only impacted my work, but also my wellebeing as a film-lover.
It was a good pitch. I sent it, marked it on my pitch tracker, scheduled a follow-up, and forgot about as I headed into a busy December. More than two weeks later, I received a response.
"I'm sympathetic here," it began. The editor proceeded to explain that, due to antipathy from readers, the outlet had ceased all COVID-related coverage. According to them, the way COVID had dominated the media and cultural landscape had made it "a topic that has people running in the other direction screaming," making it a "poor editorial bet" for the publication.
It wasn't a surprise to learn that an outlet didn't want to cover COVID. The media has reached a consensus that, despite overwhelming evidence otherwise, the pandemic has ended, COVID is no longer dangerous, and that those who continue to observe care around it — COVID disproportionately impacts disabled communities — have a value of zero.
What was a surprise was the clear glee an editor at so large a publication took in communicating that disregard to me, a disabled writer. In the two years since, that level of ableism is no longer as shocking nor is this the only editor who has been nakedly ableist towards me without consequence. Editors have made a habit of receiving pitches on disability and inviting me to talk about something else entirely. Any common sense with which they might approach sensitive topics is discarded when dealing with disability as a subject, and in writers.
Yet, it still wrankles that an editor could communicate so overt an abdication of journalistic responsibility so casually; to make clear, without pause, how unsafe I was at their publication. It may not be an uncommon situation in 2026, but it still feels remarkable how comfortable editors are being ableist and how entitled they feel to responding however they like to pitches.
I intended to reply. I wanted to point out that if the truth of a subject makes readers uncomfortable, it should be reported more. Being culture journalists does not absolve of us of that responsibility. If nothing else, I wanted to make clear how unsafe that information had made me feel; to highlight that the meaning of the words the editor had thrown out so carelessly, in such patronising tones, was just ableism masquerading as editorial edict.
In the end, I couldn't see the point. You do not enact a policy like this if you're concerned with the safety of disabled writers. You do not communicate it in such a manner unless better judgement is obscured by privilege. Later in the year, I did ultimately respond. The editor continued to email me and I was forced to ask them to stop, referencing only vaguely the cause.
A depressing endnote to that situation is that I ended 2025 with an email drafted, addressed to an editor who had taken in a disability-related pitch enthusiastically, only to later renege that enthusiasm and then suggest discussing a completely different subject. It wasn't the first time it had happened that year, nor was it the first time that editor had done it. Having re-evaluated a pattern of treating disability-related pitches differently, at times inappropriately, I'd drafted a response. Just to get something down. Just to say how it had made me feel. I do not intend to send it. That editor has moved on, likely thinking nothing of the situation that arose from that ableism. As the saying goes: the axe forgest, the tree remembers.
A major part of being a disabled freelance writer is an ingrained reticence to talk about disability. You are trained be editorial apathy to keep disability-related pitches to a minimum. Pitching disability and accessibility stories, that is quickly reinforced by a more overt ableism that remains un-censured and to which, as a writer under editorial power, you have few, if any, avenues to respond. It's waiting for editors to say something that makes you feel unsafe, until you are struggling for outlets you can safely pitch. You begin to feel like you are the problem, simply because you have a problem with the casual dismissal of disabled perspectives.
That I’ve been agitated since this response is less about losing a major publication (even one at the lower end of industry pay) and more about having to wonder, when ableism is so overt and so accepted, where am I safe as a disabled writer? It’s a question to which I increasingly don’t have an answer.
This stray thought was originally published on a previous blog. I've brought it over and updated it — with more ableism! — for 2026.