You can't be a good little liberal without regular visits to the Huffington Post, the wildly successful left-leaning site which was recently sold to AOL for $315 million. Fans of the HuffPo are wondering what the sale will mean to the site's content.
One thing that will not change is the HuffPo's policy of not paying freelancers.
I'd rather write for a right-winger that shows me the respect of paying me for my work than a supposed "liberal" who screws me over instead of oohing and ahhing over the supreme privilege of contributing to a rich woman's website for nothing.
One thing that will not change is the HuffPo's policy of not paying freelancers.
Arianna Huffington, the supposed liberal champion of the oppressed and the friend of the working man will walk away from the sale or her site to AOL with $100 million. And AOL/HuffPo will continue their tradition of not paying contributors a damn dime.Whatever the ultimate impact of AOL's $315-million acquisition of the Huffington Post on the new-media landscape, it's already clear that the merger will push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy.
<snip>
The other partner to this dubious arrangement is the Huffington Post, which is a new-media marvel of ingenuity, combining a mastery of editing geared to game the search engines that stimulate Web traffic and overhead that would shame an antebellum plantation. The bulk of the site's content is provided by commentators, who work for nothing other than the opportunity to champion causes or ideas to which they're devoted. Most of the rest of the content is "aggregated" — which is to say stolen — from the newspapers and television networks that pay journalists to gather and edit the news.
The Huffington Post is a brilliantly packaged product with a particular flair for addressing the cultural and entertainment tastes of its overwhelmingly liberal audience. To grasp its business model, though, you need to picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates. Given the fact that its founder, Huffington, reportedly will walk away from this acquisition with a personal profit of as much as $100 million, it makes all the Post's raging against Wall Street plutocrats, crony capitalism and the Bush and Obama administrations' insensitivities to the middle class and the unemployed a bit much.
link
I'd rather write for a right-winger that shows me the respect of paying me for my work than a supposed "liberal" who screws me over instead of oohing and ahhing over the supreme privilege of contributing to a rich woman's website for nothing.
I like the HuffPo in some ways, but their business philosophy SUCKS and as it gains in popularity, it's freelancers who will get hit in the wallet and that doubly SUCKS. Huffington may be a hero to the Left, but she's also a cheapskate who screws over freelancers.Huffington has built a $300 million media empire off the backs of people who write for free. The excuse that many bloggers and writers give when writing for free is that it gives them exposure. I certainly am aware that “exposure” can be a form of payment, but there are limits. You have to be choosy especially if your eventual goal is to freelance write fulltime.
On a site like HuffPo which is crowded with content, readers rarely click through to links contained in posts or their skimpy author box. When you visit HuffPo it feels like you’re being attacked with information. If you follow my pattern when I visit the site you click from article to article paying little to no attention to who wrote what. Some exposure that is!
If I’m trying to decide between submitting original content or altered reposted content to Huff Po OR some local or small magazine that pays $50, I choose the magazine. Most people know by now that almost anyone can be published on a site like Huffington Post while even small magazines have editorial standards and require some bit of expertise in the area in which you’re writing. Further, that $50 that you get from the magazine can be used to buy ads on blogads or some other site. There’s more exposure to be had advertising on a low traffic but relevant-to-your-niche blog than there is by having a couple posts on a crowded site.
link