Feeling conflicted: tech media’s messy ethics
Michael Arrington started TechCrunch in 2005, and since then he’s been the driving force of the site, successfully building its reputation as a go-to source for tech news. Last fall, AOL acquired TechCrunch, paying between $25 million and $40 million (guesstimates, since AOL never confirmed the amount publicly). Recently, Arrington went back to his venture-capitalist […]
Re-evaluating HuffPo’s unpaid bloggers
On his Mixed Media blog at Forbes.com, Jeff Bercovici offers a new angle to consider in the recent lawsuit that unpaid writers have brought against the Huffington Post and AOL. Bercovici starts off by acknowledging that, in terms of ad revenue, US$105 million is too high a value for the bloggers’ work, but he builds […]
A misguided tactic with its heart in the right place
Writer and trade unionist Jonathan Tasini has fought and won battles on behalf of freelance journalists in the past. But his lawsuit against Arianna Huffington and AOL, launched yesterday, seems as likely to alienate current supporters of unpaid Huffington Post bloggers as it does to get more people on their side. Tasini is asking for […]
Asking Arianna for change
Open letters to publications’ management are a last-ditch tactic to right wrongs and spur change—but as we’ve seen recently, they can be effective. Now, adding his voice to many others asking the Huffington Post to reconsider its approach to compensating writers, comes Bernie Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild-CWA, with an open letter to Arianna […]
“Hey Arianna, Can You Spare a Dime?”
California freelancers have started a Facebook group to ask Arianna Huffington to share some of her $350 million windfall from the recent sale of the Huffington Post to AOL. The episode is a stark lesson for those writers who thought that simply being allowed to contribute to this revolutionary media form was compensation enough. The new […]
Content=journalism adulterated into mere commodity
Tim Rutten skewers AOL and the Huffington Post in today’s LA Times. The company and blog are a match made in journalism hell. Both have contributed to reducing online journalism to a slight commodity that exploits desperate journalists, many of whom lost their jobs – and benefits and pensions – in the traditional media. Here’s the conclusion Rutten draws: […]
