Write for free!: Froma Harrop on the Huffington Post

I missed this editorial from last December, in which syndicated columnist Froma Harrop takes apart Arianna Huffington's electronic-sweatshop business model:

Paying bloggers is “not our financial model,” The Huffington Post’s co-founder, Ken Lerer, told USAToday. What a profitable business that must be.

The Huffington Post is a popular liberal blog site named for Arianna Huffington, a pundit and power broker in the celebrity-industrial complex. Huffington is also very smart. After all, she has 1,800 contributors typing their little fingers off for no money, while sending the site’s ad revenue and $10 million in funding into other pockets.

The concept is ingenious: Huffington gives her Hollywood pals a stage on which to strut their political opinions. (Few newspapers care what Alec Baldwin thinks about Iran.) The armies of ordinary scriveners are paid in trickle-down glamour. It’s Blogging with the Stars....

Great piece, well worth a read. Go Froma!

Comments

[Sid]

Good luck on this. I'm not being a smartass: honestly, good luck to you on trying to point this out. I just know from sad experience, though, that until the money to pay editors runs out, it'll keep going forever. You just have too many wannabe and has-been writers willing to work for free because they figure a shiny new venue might give them their big break. The quality may diminish as the more talented realize that they're never going to get paid and that the exposure isn't worth it, but they're just replaced by more zombies.

It's not just here, either. Look at the number of daily and weekly newspapers that pay their top bloggers by the click, and you'll usually see about five to ten who were promised that they'll be brought on at those lofty rates "once you've proven yourself". Well, after a year or two of free contributions, why the hell should they pay? The venue already has a year or so of content, which is usually owned outright by the venue so the blogger can't take it elsewhere, and if readers ask what happened when the blogger quits, all they'll get is a snotty "This person no longer works for us." In most cases, particularly with film or music commentary, the venue can just hand the blog over to a new grunt, and most readers wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

This is why while I agree with what you're trying to do, I'm very dubious as to whether it'll actually happen, because you just have too many hungry wannabes who assume that all they need is a break. Just as with the number of hungry young actors moving to Los Angeles who figure that doing "just one" on spec porno will give them enough credit to move to bigger things, you'll always see wannabe writers willing to be screwed for free. Unfortunately, our business is one where we're all whores, and most of us are perfectly willing to do an all-nighter, complete with bunny suit and enema bag, for IOUs.

[Jil]

A colleague of mine puts it best: too many publications take the first part of "freelancer" literally.

[Loki]

I do the same on HumidCity with one exception: I don't make a penny either. A subtle but elegant difference...