Speaking Out About Patheos

A few weeks ago I wrote about how I was one of the bloggers who left Patheos in the wake of issues with the new contract we were expected to sign. The questionable contract combined with having less time for writing blog posts outside of my own personal blog here led me to make that decision. My co-blogger at Paths Through the Forests, Rua Lupa, also left Patheos shortly thereafter.

Before she left, she deleted both her and my content (with my permission). Within three days, all our content was back up on the site (click the link for her detailed writeup.) As detailed in said post, Patheos is attempting to nullify the ability of an author to terminate their contract with a Survival Clause.

I have still sent a letter of contract termination to Patheos, and if my content is still up after 30 days I’ll be getting legal consultation to see what my options are. In the meantime, here are a few ways you can help:

Sign this petition telling Patheos to take down the content written by those writers who have left Patheos’ pagan channel

–Don’t link to any content from Paths Through the Forests or other blogs from writers who have left Patheos, since traffic to those pages leads to Patheos getting income.

–Support the independent blogs of the writers who chose to leave (a list of writers can be found in the text of the petition linked above, and our blogs can generally be found with a simple Google search. You’re already reading mine, of course!) Extra bonus points if you support the Patreon or other crowdfunding efforts of those who have them! (My Patreon’s over here.) Patheos was supposed to be a paying platform for those who got enough page views, though many of us just didn’t hit that threshold.

–Support pagan-owned and operated blogging platforms like paganSquare and Pagan Bloggers, as well as sites like Panegyria and The Wild Hunt that have both dedicated writers and guest posts.

FWIW, I don’t intend to set up another blog any time soon; I have my hands full just with keeping this one seeded with content. However, content from this blog will be aggregated on the new Natural Pagans site, which brings together posts from naturalist/etc. pagan blogs. (It’s still a bit under construction–did I mention it’s like really, shiny-new within the past few days?)

And while I am seriously bogged down in work right now, I do intend to get back to writing more here later in spring as things calm down. I may also repost some of my old Patheos content here, just because I did get some good posts out of my time there.

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