Friday, April 15, 2011

Unpaid bloggers suing Ariana Huffington for $105 million don't deserve a penny...

(...)

It was (and is) the same principle behind TV appearances -- also unpaid, also content the networks run advertising against. I understood that and made the best use of it that I could, as did any number of people I know. Many of these same people, as a result of their time at HuffPo, now have paid writing gigs, or books deals, or consulting gigs, etc.

Take my word for it, people who could get paid for their writing in other venues weren't giving it away for free on HuffPo, unless the higher profile of the site was more valuable to them than whatever they might get paid elsewhere.

Essentially what Arianna was providing wa a place for writers to advertise their wares -- a sort of classifieds for wannabe writers, except unlike the classifieds she wasn't charging. That's not to say she couldn't have -- at the height of the 2008 election cycle, before Twitter fully arrived, people were so eager to make their opinions known I'm quite sure Arianna could have successfully charged some sort of small fee to post at HuffPo if she'd wanted. Full story...

Don't miss:
  1. AOL, Huffington Post sued by "unpaid" writers... 
  2. Aggregators: if we can't beat them, let's join them...
  3. New York man faces five years in jail for ‘linking’ to online videos...
  4. Swiss court decides not to reveal blogger's identity...
  5. Chronically ill, autistic blogger's lawyer blasts Denver Post for Righthaven suit... 

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