HuffPoUnionAction

March 21, 2011 4:23 PM

The Newspaper Guild is calling on unpaid writers of the Huffington Post to withhold their work in support of a strike launched by Visual Art Source in response to the company’s practice of using unpaid labor. In addition, we are asking that our members and all supporters of fair and equitable compensation for journalists join us in shining a light on the unprofessional and unethical practices of this company.

Arianna Huffington: 'Go Ahead, Go On Strike -- No One Will Notice'

posted by hippybear (52 comments total)

It's not really a strike if you're not employed there, is it? It's just you not giving them free stuff anymore...stuff you knew you wouldn't be paid for in the first place.
posted by inturnaround at 4:26 PM on March 21, 2011

No way. You're saying the Newspaper Guild still exists?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:26 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

On the flip side of the coin, it'll be interesting to see if NYT's new pricing scheme works out. Some are skeptical.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:29 PM on March 21, 2011

You're saying the Newspaper Guild still exists?

yes, and wielding power and industry influence the likes of which haven't been seen since the glory days of the HTML Writers Guild...
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 4:31 PM on March 21, 2011 [11 favorites]

No way. You're saying the Newspaper Guild still exists?

Indeed, although they wield nowhere the influence of the Lollipop Guild.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:39 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I hope the quality of HuffPo wont be diminished....
posted by munchingzombie at 4:39 PM on March 21, 2011 [6 favorites]

Local DJs used to talk about doing this all the time. Not playing gigs for free, or setting a minimum price. The problem is that DJing isn't very hard, and it's a lot of fun, and there are always DJs willing to do it for free. The only ones that got paid are the ones that actually drew a ton of people and earned money for the club owners over what they'd get with a jukebox. There are very few DJs in any town who are capable of doing that, but they all got paid well for it. The rest of them played for drinks or for free until they got into a position where they were a serious draw on their own.

I suspect that journalism is the same way. Unless you are bringing more eyeballs to the website than the website is bringing to you, don't expect to get paid. Hell, you should be grateful that they aren't charging you. When you get to be enough of a draw that the paper would notice you leaving, then you can start to ask for money.
posted by empath at 4:42 PM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

calling on unpaid writers to withhold their work in response to the company’s practice of using unpaid labor

Errrrrr, if they are unpaid writers they already know about their lack of a pay check. Its not like a strike is going to bring about enlightenment.
posted by rough ashlar at 4:42 PM on March 21, 2011

Really, they should be asking their readers to withhold their page views. If the readers of Huffington Post are in favor of fair compensation for labor in any industry, they should be in favor of it for content creators. Don't look at content produced by unpaid labor. Or if you do, use and ad-blocker and leave comments saying that you use an ad-blocker
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:44 PM on March 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

Although, now that I've said that, I don't know why Huffpo can't do a youtube-style revenue-sharing model.
posted by empath at 4:44 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Arianna Huffington: 'Go Ahead, Go On Strike -- No One Will Notice'

It's rare I agree with Arianna Huffington, but... I agree with Arianna Huffington!
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:45 PM on March 21, 2011

You know, I don't really give two shits about HuffPo, so I don't know anything about the fairness of their labor practices or what the real grievances are here or whatever. But this:

And, she said, there are plenty of people willing to take their place if they do.

“The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”

could have come out of the mouth of any industrial capitalist and union-buster of the last two centuries. I guess it's a good thing I never really thought Huffington was a leftist, or I'd be pretty disappointed right now. All she's missing is a cigar to chew on while she growls, "You'll never work in this town again if you cross me, you hear?"
posted by Errant at 4:45 PM on March 21, 2011 [13 favorites]

an ad-blocker. dammit.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:45 PM on March 21, 2011

could have come out of the mouth of any industrial capitalist and union-buster of the last two centuries.

It does end up being a bit "they should be grateful they even HAVE a job" when you step back a bit, doesn't it?
posted by hippybear at 4:48 PM on March 21, 2011

I suspect that journalism is the same way.

Actually, no. Journalism, if done properly, is very hard. But you might not know that if you get your "news" from the Huffington Post.
posted by neroli at 4:49 PM on March 21, 2011 [12 favorites]

We're next.
posted by ardgedee at 4:51 PM on March 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

All my thoughts about Huffington Post wrap up neatly in a Greasemonkey extension for Firefox: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/98989
posted by fredludd at 4:54 PM on March 21, 2011

Indeed, although they wield nowhere the influence of the Lollipop Guild.

Has the GOP not yet voted to suspend the collective bargaining rights of the Lollipop Guild?
posted by jnnla at 4:56 PM on March 21, 2011

Actually, the discussion would be much more interesting if it were informed by the excellent analysis of the always perceptive Nate Silver: The Economics of Blogging and The Huffington Post.

Bottom line: THP does not make much at all from unpaid bloggers, and their entires draw very few page views. All the unpaid bloggers could go away tomorrow, and THP's bottom line would not miss a beat.
posted by VikingSword at 4:56 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Actually, no. Journalism, if done properly, is very hard. But you might not know that if you get your "news" from the Huffington Post.

I probably should have saidi 'journalism'. The kind of stuff people are doing for free isn't the kind of stuff that reporters should expect to get paid for, from what I've seen.

Those guys are free to start their own blog and put ads up, if they think they can make money from it, anyway.
posted by empath at 4:57 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

From the way the commenters on the "go ahead and strike" link are carrying on, I'm under the impression that Arianna Huffington has a bunch of bloggers chained to computers in the steerage section of some old cruise ship in international waters, slaving away with no chance of escape or reprieve.
posted by dantsea at 4:57 PM on March 21, 2011

Also, don't click on HuffPo links in Google results. If there is a story that looks interesting, go to the front page and navigate from there.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:58 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

It does end up being a bit "they should be grateful they even HAVE a job" when you step back a bit, doesn't it?

There's probably plenty of good reasons why these unpaid bloggers are unpaid, and I have my doubts as to the amount of exploitation they may be suffering. But, ye gods, you'd think a lefty-type media mogul would check her labor dismissals while Wisconsin is exploding. It's not great PR, I wouldn't say. But since this is about as much as I'll care about HuffPo all month, it's not like my opinion's likely to matter to her anyway.
posted by Errant at 5:01 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

There's a lesson here that if you value your labor, don't get into the habit of giving it away for free.
posted by entropone at 5:04 PM on March 21, 2011 [8 favorites]

I catch the HuffPo on my Twitter feed, and the biggest difficulty I have with it is telling headline tweets from the Onion's headlines. So I'm not sure their bloggers really deserve to get paid. Welcome to the new media.
posted by happyroach at 5:09 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you value your labor, enact protectionist tariffs to prevent lower cost labor from taking your job.
posted by b1tr0t at 5:09 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

HuffPo is full of shitty, half-assed "journalism," and is run by a narcissistic shill. Making a name for yourself there is harder than doing it on your own.

So yeah, I'll boycott HuffPo (I already don't write there) because I think Huffington is obnoxious, especially in response to her bloggers, but it's a little like if Pizza Hut suddenly got all extra anti-union or anti-labor. I already don't eat there, so boycotting would be pretty ineffective.
posted by klangklangston at 5:12 PM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

I know I happen to come from an industry that usually pays its interns better than other industries' entry-level employees, but the extent to which writing as a profession involves "give your effort away, constantly, to earn other people money, in the hopes that some day you can get paid" astonishes me on a regular basis.
posted by Tomorrowful at 5:19 PM on March 21, 2011 [6 favorites]

My understanding was that HuffPo paid all of their writers homeopathically.
posted by brundlefly at 5:33 PM on March 21, 2011 [13 favorites]

Since Arianna ran for governor and didn't think twice about releasing the information that she didn't pay taxes, I doubt this will seriously bother her in a personal way. While I don't really think that any of the volunteer bloggers are getting much in the way of glory from Huff Po, it is a site that gets more eyeballs and clicks than most of these people would on their own. Anyone whose posts are getting lots of page views, comments or links from other sites should present that information to the Huff Po management team, should such exist. When I was a paid blogger, page views and media mentions drove revenue.
posted by Ideefixe at 5:40 PM on March 21, 2011

Wait they let people blog and comment for free? They should charge those people a nominal fee like $5. I mean how are they going to pay the mods otherwise.
posted by humanfont at 5:52 PM on March 21, 2011

There's a lesson here that if you value your labor, don't get into the habit of giving it away for free.

I'm confused. You obviously don't value that comment, so I'm not sure what to make of it.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:53 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The only ones that got paid are the ones that actually drew a ton of people and earned money for the club owners over what they'd get with a jukebox. […] I suspect that journalism is the same way.

See also: photography.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:09 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The bloggers on Huff Po are paid, just not in cash. They get attention, page views, notoriety, etc. that they would not get if they were just some schmuck with a blog. They probably are getting paid pretty close to what they are worth.
posted by COD at 6:14 PM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'm confused. You obviously don't value that comment, so I'm not sure what to make of it.

Don't troll me, bro.
posted by entropone at 6:24 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

I work with people that get paid to write. I get offers to write for free all the time. I always turn them down because I'd get pissed if the writers I work with started doing my job for free. I think the quality of the HuffPo has diminished over the year(s). I'm not sure you can blame the free writing they use, but I'm pretty sure it's not helping.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:30 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

I think people should get paid for good writing. Unsourced posts on how vaccines cause autism?

Not what I'm talking about.
posted by Astro Zombie at 6:51 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Have I ever mentioned the time that Huffpo crashed my servers and nearly got me fired, after they hotlinked/embedded a live streaming video from my site using their own player, and set it to autoplay whenever anybody viewed the article on their site?

Yeah. The Jenny McCarthy stuff is just icing on the cake. HuffPo hasn't gotten my eyeballs in quite some time. I'd equate HuffPo to the "Fox News of the Left," except I'd think that most liberal-minded folks would probably take an association with HuffPo as an insult.
posted by schmod at 6:54 PM on March 21, 2011

Don't troll me, bro.

Please deposit ¢50 for a response.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:57 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

No way. You're saying the Newspaper Guild still exists?

Sure. The Newspaper Guild had weathered the changing economy of the newspaper industry quite well. This year, they recently added some 100+ writers for the Daily Beast. The Baltimore Newspaper Guild (part of the Communication Workers of America) also represents national AFL-CIO staff members. Pretty great union, IMO.
posted by willie11 at 7:21 PM on March 21, 2011

I guess it's a good thing I never really thought Huffington was a leftist, or I'd be pretty disappointed right now.

Management is management, regardless of where they stand in the ideological spectrum. It baffles me that American progressives think that would ever not be the case.
posted by willie11 at 7:24 PM on March 21, 2011

a) I think Huffpo writers are generally paid exactly what their work is worth

b) Journalism leapt out of the building a long time ago. Now it's hitting the ground, people are all het up about it.

The problem, in this sense, isn't HuffPo; on the contrary, it's the industry that pays people a steady wage to produce horseshit no better than HuffPo. I mean, for god's sake, they're not even gifted amateurs or subject matter experts over there.

Why would you pay for a cup of warm shit when someone is handing out buckets of it for free? The problem for most journalistic entities is that their response to this existential crisis was not to stop selling warm shit, but to produce more and more of it.
posted by smoke at 8:34 PM on March 21, 2011

I'm embarrassed to say that HP is still on my favorites bar and is my main source of headline news. I got sucked in during the Obama election but keep feeling more and more skeevy for supporting it.

Please someone point me to a good liberal-leaning general news page with world and US politics? So I can be done with Arianna?
posted by Meatbomb at 9:07 PM on March 21, 2011

Meatbomb, I still like WaPo but apparently I am supposed to think that it sucks now?
posted by silby at 9:22 PM on March 21, 2011

Alternate answer
posted by silby at 9:23 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Local DJs used to talk about doing this all the time. Not playing gigs for free, or setting a minimum price. The problem is that DJing isn't very hard, and it's a lot of fun, and there are always DJs willing to do it for free. The only ones that got paid are the ones that actually drew a ton of people and earned money for the club owners over what they'd get with a jukebox.

Which is why they need to do what the actors guild does. No one would be allowed to play at a club that hired non-guild DJs. But whatever, it probably wouldn't work.

Anyway, everyone should just install adblock. That way you don't have to worry about your impressions helping evil websites -- they'll be worthless. Huffpo, Gawker, whatever. Plus it will make your life better overall, IMO.

It does end up being a bit "they should be grateful they even HAVE a job" when you step back a bit, doesn't it?

Except they don't have jobs. HuffPo works the same way metafilter does. By posting your comments here you're perpetuating the same system of making money on user-generated content that powers the huffington post!! The incentives are a little different, though, since HuffPo is seen as an opportunity to self-promote for a lot of people, rather then joining a conversation.

I was thinking it would be cool to setup a UGC site that paid contributors based on karma or something. But the problem is, the vast majority of comments/posts wouldn't be worth much.
posted by delmoi at 1:28 AM on March 22, 2011

Dont read the Huffington Post. Period.

Don't link it.
Don't quote it.
Don't retweet it.

It's bullshit they dont get money from bloggers. They do because what's most valuable about their unpaid labor is not only their own traffic but their SEO. Huffington Post is one huge gray-hat SEO scam and it's built on the backs of their unpaid labor.

Good alternatives? Create a headlines aggregator of your own with either a Drupal or WordPress blog. Or for the tech averse, curate your own list of media sources on twitter. Here's mine @culturekitchen/media.
posted by liza at 8:05 AM on March 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Except they don't have jobs. HuffPo works the same way metafilter does.

That's a good point. We should go on strike until matt starts paying us.

I want my money.
posted by empath at 8:21 AM on March 22, 2011

Sure. The Newspaper Guild had weathered the changing economy of the newspaper industry quite well. ... Pretty great union, IMO.

You're high. And I say that in the nicest possible way. ;-)

The mistake the Newspaper Guild (and every union) makes is that unions only function well when the work is a commodity, and newspapers have both commodity employees (e.g. pressmen) and non-commodity (creative types like reporters and editors).

The greatest newspaper pressman in the world is not that much better than the average pressman -- after all, the measure of their work is a function of a machine that can only print so many copies so fast. I can always just buy another machine...

However, the gap between the best editor and the average editor can be a yawning chasm. One is average. The other wins Pulitzers.

The other mistake the Newspaper Guild makes is allowing their partnered papers, via contract, to hire both union and non-union workers, so long as the non-union workers are not full time, which creates tiers of employees and fictional "part-time employees" that get paid for 39 hours of work, regardless of how much time they actually put in, and regardless of their role. This creates antagonism within each paper between the unambitious folks that can't ever be fired, and everyone else. It's bullshit, and it exists at every Newspaper Guild paper.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:22 AM on March 22, 2011

CoolPappaBell: regarding the the part time v full time employee issue, that is a management demand. I'm sure that the union would rather represent those p/t workers than not.

As for your first point, I just don't see the relevance of your editors are more valuable than journalists statement. But whatever. It's tough to read the blue through my haze of bong smoke sometimes...
posted by willie11 at 11:37 AM on March 22, 2011

Editors are journalists. Pressman = the guy that runs the printing presses. The Newspaper Guild represents both, despite the jobs being waaaay different in scope.

Puff, puff, pass.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:37 PM on March 22, 2011

CoolPappaBell: It is standard practice for unions to represent a variety of non-managerial workers of different occupations within a common workplace. Teamsters represent the package drivers at UPS and the box-loaders. So I still don't get your point.

And, yes, editors are journalists, but they are also generally management and thus not subject to union representation.

On the subject of the post, good on these guys for putting together this action. It's certainly unorthodox and I'm not sure what their end-game is, but as someone commented earlier, it is extraordinarily detrimental to the field of professional writing to have free labor enter the marketplace. Anything that can be done to halt the progress of this unfair practice seems like a good thing to me.
posted by willie11 at 3:56 PM on March 22, 2011