Kevin Allman

Write for free!: in today's New York Times

The New York Times' Katharine Q. Seelye looks at two new journalistic endeavors based on the Write For Free! model--Arianna Huffington's "Off the Bus" and something called "Scoop08":

They both want to tackle imaginative, under-reported stories with their armies of citizen correspondents. They have been aided by low start-up costs: $150,000 for Off The Bus, and less than $20,000 for Scoop’s first months of operation. Both rely on free labor.

I guess we're settling on "citizen correspondents" and "citizen journalists" as the acceptable synonyms for "unpaid freelancers." It's a clever bit of Newspeak, with its implication that paid correspondents and journalists are...I don't know what. Non-citizens? Bad citizens?

Well, at least some people are being paid. The site's owners, for one. Marc Cooper, for two:

“In two days, we can have 50 or 100 people work an hour a day and do the work it used to take a reporter two months to do,” said Marc Cooper, 56, who is OTB’s editorial director and teaches journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School.

Ms. Huffington said that the biggest lesson she has learned so far is that “a lot of citizen journalists need journalistic guidance.” To address this, she hired Mr. Cooper six weeks ago to set editorial standards and maintain them.

“This is not done by some kind of voodoo, where you throw it out to the mass and it comes back in perfect shape,” Mr. Cooper said. “We use traditional newsroom protocol, with research, fact-checking and reporting. It’s just being done with a larger pyramid base of participation.”

Back in the hoary old days, "traditional newsroom protocol" included a paycheck.

I checked out Mr. Cooper's vast personal/professional website, and noticed his bio included this:

My reporting for The Nation has ranged from investigating river boat gambling, to exposing exploitation of immigrant labor in the meat-packing industry, to covering globalization and labor...My daughter, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, is the greatest source of pride and satisfaction in my life. She’s a fearsome health care organizer for the Service Employees International Union Local 250 and she gives me hope that that there might, indeed, be a bright future for all.

Marc Cooper's daughter sounds like a bright woman. Wonder if he'd be so proud of her if she tried to organize a labor union among her old man's new cadre of unpaid "citizen journalists"?

Write for free!: Full speed ahead at The Oregonian

The Oregonian's "Write For Free!" initiative continues apace; this morning's Editor's Note congratulates all its readers who auditioned for its pages, and were given the opportunity to become unpaid freelancers "Oregonian community writers":

Five weeks ago, we invited you to nominate yourself if you wanted to come aboard as one of a dozen community writers who would contribute regularly to The Oregonian's pages and our Opinion blog.

So many of you responded with the requisite resume and three writing samples that it took us until now to finish going through the more than 250 submissions.

You're an impressive bunch. Earnest, engaged and often witty.

We easily could have selected two dozen -- or even three dozen -- of you, but now we've settled on 12 who've agreed to serve as Community Writers.

We'll introduce them to you on Sunday, Nov. 4, in print and online. We're excited about launching this new initiative aimed at expanding the civic conversation among members of our community.

I'm still fascinated by the cojones it takes to turn your customers into your employees, all under the guise of "civic conversation."

When a newspaper asks you to put your four bits in the sidewalk machine, it isn't selling the paper on which it's printed, or the ink on its pages. It's selling information and thought. It's selling writing.

So why would any paper feel it's acceptable to pay for newsprint and ink, but not writers?

Announcing a new category: WRITE FOR FREE!

I'm going to start tracking the trend with (some) newspapers asking their readers to Write For Free!.

The Oregonian's done it on the op-ed page ("Sorry, there's no pay involved. However, we'll spring for coffee and muffins at a get-acquainted meeting if you're chosen"); Willamette Week tried it briefly with its WWire blog (but reversed itself pretty quickly).

And now the Bismarck Tribune is soliciting book reviewers who aren't afraid to put the free into freelance:

The Bismarck Tribune, as a 30,000-circulation newspaper, can't afford to employ a full-time book reviewer to help others determine if a specific book is a great way to spend a few hours, if the effort is a total waste of time - or if the story is worthy of something in between.

But the Tribune readership market has more than 100,000 people, many of whom have varied interests and expertise and share the love of reading. If you are one of those people, you could read a book and write a review for possible publication in the newspaper.

Oh -- and don't even think about keeping the book or the ARC:

The book or product, after reviewed, will be passed along for others to read or donated to charity or a library.