By Steven T. Jones
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the Huffington Post, and not just because of media-savvy founder Arianna Huffington’s convenient conversion from neocon darling to progressive populist. No, for me, as a struggling newspaper journalist of 17 years (and with the debt to prove it), I’m bothered by a business model that relies on free content. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe writers — even that subspecies known as bloggers — should be paid for their work. More media, great; more exploitation of media professionals, not so great.
But of even greater concern is that HuffPo has apparently been outright stealing content from other outlets that do pay their writers, as a post and discussion over at the Chicago Reader’s blog details. I’ve heard these stories for quite awhile and I know some of the victims, so it doesn’t seem like this is an isolated instance.
At a time when my profession has been decimated by corporate layoffs and challenged by evolving expectations of readers, HuffPo often get held up as a model for the future. In fact, they reportedly have their sights set on the San Francisco media market, flush with venture capital cash. Unless they can figure out a way to pay reporters for working a beat, HuffPo could be a huge contributor to journalism’s demise rather than its savior.