Further Blips on The News Screen Portend...What?
More milestones this week in the big ongoing quest for The Future of Journalism. Arianna Huffington leapt gleefully into bed with AOL.com, prompting a friend, a journalist with long experience who has been covering environmental issues from the Midwest for HuffPo’s Green Page, to write “Bummer, really, and somewhat disgusting that Huffington et al have made millions on the unpaid work of HuffPo bloggers....”
She has a point, and yet the discussion could be turned on its head:
Only some of these writers, the ones who are paid for work published elsewhere, are providing something of value for free. But the Huffington Post has been providing hundreds of otherwise unpublished writers with a platform at absolutely no charge to them. Just sayin’.
And there’s a third, often ignored, perspective, that of the readers, also known as the seekers after information. They don’t need to care who’s making and who’s losing money as long as the information (or entertainment) continues to flow in their direction.
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