AdAge on Arianna

Sure, I like HuffPo as much as the next liberal, but i couldn't agree more with AdAge's Simon Dumenco. He points out the irony in the fact that Syracuse's Journalism School is giving its "Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award" to the woman whose business model relies on kicking journalists to the curb.

Arianna pays writers in "exposure". Not money. Which is great, if you already have a day job, or don't need one. But whether her fault or not, the problem is that the model has spread to any number of digital news sites that are reluctant to pay for content. (Content. What is that, exactly?) And expect writers to not only thank them for the privilege, but come back for more:

Write for us! We'll give you visibility! We'll pay you by the click! You never have to leave the building! All you have to do is riff on other people's work!

I've ranted (okay, riffed) about the insidious practice here, here and here, among other venues. No good can come of it. Not for writers. Not for readers. (er, users?)

From the post:

I've been raging about HuffPo's devaluation of content -- and, ergo, content creators -- since late 2007, when HuffPo co-founder Ken Lerer told USA Today the company had no plans to ever pay its bloggers: "That's not our financial model. We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company."

At the time, a HuffPo contributor, Blake Fleetwood, wrote an open letter to Jim Romenesko's media blog, saying, "For HuffPo to have paid their posters from the beginning would probably have doomed the experiment at its inception." Well, fine -- except that last year The New Yorker was reporting that HuffPo was already basically break-even. And insiders have floated a valuation for the company of $200 million. I've questioned that bloated figure in this column as recently as January, but even if HuffPo is worth half that or a quarter of that, well, it's unconscionable for Huffington and Lerer and the backers of HuffPo to create millions for themselves on the backs of bloggers duped into working for "visibility." Especially since the most obvious beneficiary of the HuffPo visibility dividend is Arianna Huffington herself.

on writing for free

Go here for a thoughtful post by Tim Beyers on why writing for peanuts is worth just that.

When writing becomes "content" and desperate-for-work writers and newly-unemployed journalists write for free, or close to it, we all lose. Just say no. (I've ranted on this before here.)

From his post:

Helium sells content to publishers on the super cheap as participating writers collect crumbs. Of course a deal with Hearst is in the works. I’ll be shocked if other cash-strapped publishers don’t follow suit.

As a writer, I can attest to Helium’s allure. Write whatever you want on any topic and publish instantly? No waiting for a query response? No rejections? Sign me up.

And yet this very low bar is the literary equivalent of a siren call.

He follows with three good reasons why you shouldn't fall for it. bk

wanted: writers of independent means.

Is writing for the rich? That's the question Francis Wilkinson, one of the original writing recruiters for the Huffington Post, poses in this essay from this week's The Week.

If not for the rich, certainly for folks with day jobs. You wonder what that tells us -- about the industry itself, and the value we readers/viewers place on thoughtful and responsible journalism.

From his essay:

The Internet has brought the newspaper business to its knees. Some serious magazines are undergoing stress tests of their own. Maybe a certain kind of writing about the world, informed by underdog experience and lower-class perspective, will also prove to be a relic of the dead-tree era. Such writing wasn’t in great supply before. But movie stars, business executives, even accomplished authors all write for free these days. Why should some kid nobody’s ever heard of get paid?