goin' poachin'

This is the way the HuffPo rolls, writes Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader: Give us your work, we'll give you exposure. But not, unfortunately, money.

Or publish something somewhere, and we'll link to it, along with a clever riff. But we won't pay for that, either.

But it's not just the HuffPo, it's most blogs. (Ahem) And most of them have only the tiniest fraction of HuffPo's readers.

Makes you wonder: Why are so many writers willing to work for free? Why can bloggers (ahem again) get away with poaching -- even though they call it aggregation? And, as someone smart once mused, don't people who know what they are doing do it better when they are paid to do it?

Or have we decided that all you need to call yourself a journalist -- is a day job.

If the HuffPo is the future of journalism, fine. It's smart and entertaining. But if the HuffPo model is the future, maybe not so much. bk

so is THIS the new media?

If you weren't confused before about the future of journalism, you will be now:

Just when we thought the journalism biz was heading digital, with no turning back, Wired reports that a startup called The Printed Blog will launch a twice-daily print newspaper that aggregates a selection of ... blogs.

Another way of looking at it: Just when we thought the blogosphere was driving newspapers out of business, along comes a plan to make money off blogs by delivering them on paper. Weird. I mean, Wired. From the article:

“'Why hasn’t anyone tried to take the best content and bring it offline?' said [founder and former business productivity software entrepreneur Joshua] Karp, who thinks print media is far from dying.

“'[For] people around the world, who need to and want to consume information, whether it be in developing countries or emerging countries, newsprint is still going to be a main mechanism for information for years to come,' he said.

"The hope is that the hyperlocal content will attract local advertisers who can spend less to reach out to their target audience. Ads are relatively cheap in comparison ($15-$25) and the paper has already lined up a number of Chicago-based businesses for its debut. It will also host classified ads.

"The first issue is expected to launch on Jan. 27, handed out at three CTA stations around Lincoln Park and Wicker Park in Chicago and one location in San Francisco. A New York edition is due out shortly."

Quick! Send me an editor!

Send me a hatchet!

Blogger Jason Linkins blogs on HuffPo today about a piece on Time.com by Michael Kinsley who (kind of) blogs about too many blogs. Read Linkins', uh, blog here.

Faced with much too much information out here in webland, the only sane thing for a sensible person to do is step away from the keyboard and exit the net.

As Linkins writes: "So the glut of content may continue to grow and grow, unabated, but it's existence does not necessitate our enslavement to it. Tomorrow, a tree shall fall in a forest somewhere, and this occasion shall pass, un-Twittered."

Or un-linked. bk