Sorry, Ariana and Markos, No More Free Content For You

I know all too much about writing for free. I do it here all the time. It's a labor of love. I've been at it for more than 900 blog posts and more than 5 years. I know about writing without being paid for it. Despite that, and despite my understanding that when I post at group blogs I know I won't get paid, I am absolutely furious about the AOL-Huffington Post Deal. Why? Because the writers are getting screwed, and they're not going to get a cent out of the deal. Not a sou.

The news this morning-- I'm sure you haven't missed it-- was that that beleaguered, dinosaur of dial up AOL has bought Huffington Post and made that doyenne of self promotion and faux progressive politics, Arianna, an AOL executive. Here's the essence of the story from the New York Times:

The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company's largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.
The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation, areas that its chief executive, Tim Armstrong, views as vital to reversing a decade-long decline.

Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL's editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL's national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company's other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone.

Meanwhile, the bloggers at HuffPo, the ones who provide the "original content creation", that was just sold for $315,000,000.00 get, wait for it, nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero. And in an email this morning to bloggers, Ariana told them not to worry, no te preocupes, they could still churn out "original content creation", just like before, and well, continue to get the same nothing for it:

The HuffPost blog team will continue to operate as it always has. Arianna will become editor-in-chief not only of HuffPost but of the newly formed Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all of AOL's content sites, including Patch, Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, PopEater, MapQuest, Black Voices, and Moviefone.

Together, our companies will have a combined base of 117 million unique U.S. visitors a month -- and 250 million around the world -- so your posts will have an even bigger impact on the national and global conversation. That's the only real change you'll notice -- more people reading what you wrote.

Far from changing the Huffington Post's editorial approach, our culture, or our mission, it will be like stepping off a fast-moving train and onto a supersonic jet. We're still traveling toward the same destination, with the same people at the wheel, and with the same goals, but we're now going to get there much, much faster.

When I first read this, I was furious. I quickly penned an essay, which I published at dailyKos in which I argued that the bloggers, the writers at HuffPo were being screwed because they weren't getting a cent out of the $315 million dollar deal.

To my amazement, many of the comments to that essay told me that I was off base. Did I write for free and publish my writing at daily Kos? Yes. Didn't I do that because it would expose me to a wide audience? Yes. Didn't I write it all for free, without hope of money? Yes. Didn't I? I did. What kind of loon (I'm paraphrasing here) would think that he should write hundreds of diaries for free and that when the platform was sold, he should receive something? You've already received something, it was argued, you got the exposure and a larger audience for your writing. You don't, it was argued, deserve anything more. You get bupkis from the $315 million deal; you don't deserve more than that.

That just may be so. I never posted an essay or a comment at HuffPo. So I don't deserve any of the $315,000,000 Ariana and her investors are being paid. I figure that if Ariana put 1% of the deal up and gave it to the writers, there would be $3.15 million to distribute. How many writers could there be? If there were 1,000, they could each be given $3,150. They could be told, "Thank you for writing for free. Because your writing helped me make a bundle, I've decided to send you this small check as a token of my appreciation. Your writing is worth far more than this amount, but this is something I want you to have as a token of my gratitude. It's not pay. It's a gift. You helped me make a big score, and I want to thank you for that."

MSNBC is reporting that HuffPo had 6,000 free bloggers writing for it (last sentence of linked article). If that's so, the 1% gratuity would come to about $500 per person. And the number of people who wrote so that Ariana could be well paid would be enormouse.

At any rate, you'd expect some acknowledgment of the bloggers and writers. You wouldn't expect anything less from a progressive. When somebody at the race track gives you a tip, and you bet the horse, and it wins, you always give the tipper some of the winning. When a football quarterback wins a big game, he takes the linemen out to dinner and drinks. You have gratitude for those who make it possible to win. When someone in business helps you out and you have gratitude, you send flowers or wine or a fruit basket. Or you pay for a meal. These are expressions of gratitude for help. They are always appreciated, especially if your original deal was that you wouldn't be paid.

Is Ariana going to get out her check book and write a check, or is she going to sit on it? Probably the latter. So I won't be signing up to write at HuffPo at any time soon. And I'll support Al Giordano and others who have decided to take down their writing from the site.

Which brings me to Markos and dailyKos. I have loved writing for dailyKos over the years. But if today's events tell me anything, it's that dailyKos might well be the next group web site to be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's the same as HuffPo in this: there are many, many talented people writing diaries there. There is some brilliant writing. That writing is the value of the site. And that writing is being given to the site and its readership for free. And when the site is ultimately acquired by the capitalists with the big check books and they write Markos a gigantic check, what then? Same story, different day. I'll be told that I agreed to write for free, that I had a large audience, and that is all. I got what I deserve; I will get nothing more. Things will be the same with the new corporate master. Why, I wonder, should I or anyone else contribute our writing, increase the value of the site, and then, poof, have it be sold while we receive nothing?

As America's former poet laureate tried to say, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." So, no, I'm done. I will not be moving to DK4 when the site changes over this week. I will not be publishing any further diaries at dailyKos. I am not willing to continue to provide value to dailyKos that will eventually be sold without any payment of any kind to me. No. I'm done. I'll stick to my blog and to the Writers Port Alliance. You can join me there or at the other Writers Port Alliance sites (all listed at the top of this blog)

HuffPo Bought By AOL

This morning's news says that beleaguered, dinosaur of dial up AOL has bought Huffington Post and made the doyenne of digital, Arianna, an executive. Here's the news from the New York Times:

The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.

The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation, areas that its chief executive, Tim Armstrong, views as vital to reversing a decade-long decline.

Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone.

Meanwhile, the bloggers at HuffPo, I'm told, the ones who provide the "original content creation" that was just sold, don't get paid. Correct me if I'm wrong. And in an email to the bloggers this morning, Arianna told them that things would remain the same:

The HuffPost blog team will continue to operate as it always has. Arianna will become editor-in-chief not only of HuffPost but of the newly formed Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all of AOL’s content sites, including Patch, Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, PopEater, MapQuest, Black Voices, and Moviefone.

Together, our companies will have a combined base of 117 million unique U.S. visitors a month -- and 250 million around the world -- so your posts will have an even bigger impact on the national and global conversation. That’s the only real change you’ll notice -- more people reading what you wrote.

Far from changing the Huffington Post’s editorial approach, our culture, or our mission, it will be like stepping off a fast-moving train and onto a supersonic jet. We’re still traveling toward the same destination, with the same people at the wheel, and with the same goals, but we’re now going to get there much, much faster.

So my initial impression-- I'm sure we'll all have time to think about this today-- is that once again the writers, the bloguer@s like you and me get to continue to tickle their keyboards and bang their heads on their monitors for free, while they create all of the "content" and the money, and it is huge money this time, will not find its way into their pockets. Not a sou.

The other point has to do with consolidation of media and control of content. The more consolidation the fewer outlets with potentially different points of view. Consolidation of media is the opposite of creating a free, multiplicity of views.

There's A Spectre Haunting The Blogosfera

My friend Claudia, who is a wonderful writer, has a piece up at her blog and at Huffpuff, in which she asks the eternal, dreaded question for writers, "Am I getting paid for my work?" The answer, as you probably expect, isn't good:

Twice in the past week, I've heard the same bad news: two media outlets for whom I'd written articles informed me that they would not be paying me for the writing I had submitted.

One outlet is a very large and prominent city newspaper. The other is a regional magazine where I used to be paid rather handsomely, as far as freelance assignments go. Neither editor I spoke to was apologetic. Indeed, they both seemed a little surprised when I registered my objection. Somehow, they seemed to imply that I shouldn't need to be paid.

Apparently, the answer to the getting paid question is, "No, you're not. And don't ask again." If you argue, well, maybe nobody will read your work, pay or not, because it won't be put up or published. And so the Crash of 2009 has arrived like an unwanted Kashruth inspector in what Isaac Bashevis Singer called, "The Literary Factory." It's 2009. Now you produce "content," and in return you receive bupkis. OK. Maybe you get some comments. Maybe you receive a few recommends. Maybe you receive the personal warmth of a job well done. None of these is redeemable for goods at the convenience mart.

This is a serious problem. Oddly, as a writer, you own and control some of the means of your production, but, alas, you're probably producing something that can only be given away. That would mean that as far as economics is concerned it has no monetary value. It's simple. If real professionals like Claudia aren't getting checks in the mail for their work, you know that the army of volunteer scribblers and weekend web warriors aren't getting checks either. We're a large, vocal, literate mob of people who are getting nothing for their work. Nothing.

Right after I respond to this situation by writing, "Writers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," I'm fresh out of material, I don't have the next sentence, the sentence about what we're going to do about this. I could even write, "There's a spectre haunting the blogosfera," but again, I don't have the next sentence, which should contain an answer. Oddly, I'm not sure where the machine is into which I could insert my shoe, or the machine I could throw my body in front of, or the factory I could occupy, or the plant I could strike. Put another way, nobody cares if you withhold from them a service that is worthless.

Nobody, as far as I know, at dd or Huffpuff or a dozen other medium and large size blogs gets paid anything to write. I know I sure don't. I know that I put up pieces just because I can and because I want to. I create "content" and I put it up. And if there are enough hits, maybe there's some money somewhere not to me, but to the blog owners to offset the costs of running the circus. And if there aren't enough hits, well, then maybe somebody will click the "donate" icon (mine at The Dream Antilles has never been clicked I'm sad to report, ever, not even for a single $1.00). And in the worst case, and here the worst case is the most probable, the blog owners might have to write some checks from their own, formerly obtained stash of money, to keep the blog they own from expiring. I doubt they have the moolah to write checks from the income their blogs have generated.

This state of affairs just isn't sustainable, which is a nice way of saying to writers and to blog owners alike, "Don't quit your day job(s)." If you want to write, unless things change, you're stuck. You're going to do it for free.

Claudia writes:

Which brings me back to the point of this poor-me --or better, poor us-- tale. If The New York Times is giving its news product away, doesn't that send a very important message ricocheting through our society: that news has no value? We live in a society that places a very clear value on things: we pay our baseball and movie star celebrities astronomically high salaries. We pay our day care providers and our teachers next to nothing.

Ironically, I am writing this for The Huffington Post, which makes no apologies about the fact that it doesn't pay its bloggers. When I --very politely-- asked an editor about this issue last year, he very nicely explained to me that the many hundred bloggers at the Huff Po are willing to write for free because they know their work is being seen by many millions of eyes.

That's true of course. And yes, I do see the value of having my work appear in the Huff Po. But I guess I am also old-fashioned. I was trained in an era when my work, appearing in The Wall Street Journal, earned me more than just readership. It earned me a salary. Writing, and reporting, took time. And time as we all know, is money.

To which I can add, standing on one leg like Hillel, that the rest is commentary. If news is worthless in the present system, opinion, its poor stepchild, no matter how clever or correct, is worth even less.