Unpaid Huffington Post bloggers ask “Hey Arianna, can you spare a dime?”
The sale of Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million, which at first drew gasps of admiration, has now produced a backlash from the countless bloggers who worked for Arianna for nothing.
Many feel they have been sold down the river. While Arianna and a select number of her team are collecting millions, the enthusiasts who made the site what it is are empty-handed - and fizzing.
As AOL Media President David Eun started clearing his desk this week - redundant with the appointment of Arriana as president and editor in chief - some angry HuffPo bloggers have started a Facebook group called “Hey Arianna, Can You Spare a Dime?”
Their theme: “We're asking you to give a little back to the unpaid writers who built the Huffington Post.”
But they're not the only ones teed off. Journalism as a way to make your living has taken a beating.
“The impact of AOL's $315m acquisition on the new-media landscape will push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy”, David Carr wrote in the New York Times.
“That will hurt not only the people who gather and edit the news but also readers and viewers.”
Tim Rutten says acidly of Huffpo in the Los Angeles Times: "Picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates. "
HuffPo spokesperson Mario Ruiz says they agree with journalists being paid for their work. “It’s why HuffPost has 143 editors, writers, and reporters on our edit team.”
She admits though: “While we pay them, we don't pay for the opinion pieces submitted by our thousands of bloggers.
“People blog on HuffPost for free for the same reason they go on cable TV shows every night for free – because they are passionate about their ideas, and want them to be heard by the largest possible audience. Our bloggers can choose to write for HuffPost – or not.”
Ruiz insists: “It’s both wrong and offensive to insist that HuffPost is exploiting journalists.”
Simon Dumenco, the ‘Media Guy’ columnist in Ad Age, doesn't see it that way. He has long been critical of - and cynical about - HuffPo. In June 2008, he wrote about HuffPo blogger Mayhill Fowler who famously recorded Barack Obama's remarks about “bitter” working-class voters “who cling to guns or religion”.
She got the OK to post her unpaid world exclusive from Arianna herself - who was vacationing on a yacht in Tahiti. The L.A. Times reported, “Huffington gave her assent.”
Dumenco's reaction then: “Ha! When the Huffington Post eventually sells, Fowler and the other industrious HuffPo bloggers sure aren't gonna get yachting vacations in Tahiti out of the deal.”
This week he wrote: “I have to say it's been a bit surreal for me to watch the recent pile-on regarding AOL's $315m acquisition of The Huffington Post… Geez, what took everybody so long?”
“Why, in 2011, are so many people suddenly agreeing with me? I think HuffPo has just pushed its luck one too many times not only with its anti-journalistic practices, but with its audience.”
David Carr says the funny thing about all these frothy millions and billions piling up in Facebook and Twitter valuations and now on HuffPo is simply that “most of the value was created by people working free”.
“The Huffington Post, social networks and traditional media may all seem like different animals, but as advertising flows toward social and amateur media, low-cost and no-cost content is becoming the norm.
“For those of us who make a living typing, it’s all very scary, of course. There is a growing perception that content is a commodity, and one that can be had for the price of zero.”
Carr says old-line media companies are not only forced to compete with the currency and sexiness of social media, but are also burdened by a cost structure for professionally produced content. “They are left at a profound disadvantage.”
Anthony De Rosa, a product manager at Reuters, says: “The technology of a lot of these sites is very seductive, and it lulls you into contributing. We are being played for suckers to feed the beast, to create content that ends up creating value for others.”
Facebook is composed of half a billion user profiles. It is both a media site and a social network. All the content is provided free of charge.
David Carr sums it all up in one brilliant sentence: “This new generation of content companies have created the equivalent of a refrigerator that manufactures and consumes its own food.”
Huffpost blogger Mayhill Fowler - she of the Obama exclusive - says today: “I really don’t care that Arianna made all that money. More power to her. The original premise was not that we would get paid, so I didn’t expect to.
“But after the election and the fact that they nominated my work for a Pulitzer, I thought that might change. I talked to Arianna about getting paid for my work, and she strung me along for two years and then it never happened.”