Film critic colleague: “You can get an AARP membership at age 50. Once upon a time you could get great rental car discounts with it. Now not so much. Also — the AARP magazine is the biggest print rag in the country. Plus it and the website pay phenomenally well. They pay $250 for 125 words. Do the math. They used to cough up a grand just to submit a list for their end-of-year roundup.”
HE to colleague: “‘Do the math’? I got $2.00 per word from Entertainment Weekly in the early to mid ‘90s.”
Colleague: “So did I except nobody earns that now. Okay, maybe a New Yorker writer.”
HE to colleague: “$2.00 per word in ’92 works out to $4.62 per word in the 2025 economy. What’s the per-word norm these days?”
Colleague: “Online, one is lucky to get 50 cents per word. In some cases it’s ten cents.”
Alternate headline: “Oldsters, AARP and Cunnilingus, Part 2.”