THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY of the Huffington Post, bloggers have worked for free. In February, HuffPo was purchased by AOL for $315 million. The site's founder, Arianna Huffington (above), retains her position and she pockets the cash.
This week, a former blogger filed a class action lawsuit against the Huffington Post and AOL.
“In my view, the Huffington Post’s bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation,” said Jonathan Tasini, the former blogger. “She wants to pocket the tens of millions of dollars she reaped from the hard work of those bloggers."
The HuffPo lawyers said:
"Our bloggers use our platform — as well as other unpaid group blogs across the web — to connect and help their work be seen by as many people as possible. It’s the same reason people go on TV shows: to promote their views and ideas."
Should the bloggers be compensated?
Or did they accept the agreed upon payment - an audience?
2 comments:
While Huffington Post bloggers absolutely deserve some form of compensation, especially since AOL has paid millions of dollars for the website, I feel like they should have known what their involvement with the site meant. I'm sure by allying themselves with the Huffington Post they have been made well-aware of the fact that they would not profit from their blogging. However, there still is a bit of injustice in my opinion when Arianna Huffington is now a millionaire and a darling on Bill Maher's television show when her foundation was built on unpaid writers and journalists. Nothing to warrant a winning law suit from Tasini though.
-Marc Snitzer
I believe that it depends on the amount of traffic each blogger is bringing to the website. The same rules apply with youtube. Users with the most traffic are rewarded with advertisers and given the option of accepting. This may be a feature that the Huffington Post needs to consider.
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