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Rumpus Book ClubShould Huffington Post Bloggers Get Paid?
A couple of weeks ago a Huffington Post blogger suggested a system for paying Huffington Post bloggers. Michelle Haimoff isn’t suggesting paying everyone, but creating a series of categories and giving a bonus to the top performers. Not enough to live on, but something to “wet their beak,” as the Godfather would say.
We asked C. Max Magee, Eve Batey, and Richard Nash to respond to Haimoff’s suggestions.
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C. Max Magee, founding editor The Millions:
This HuffPo writer is right. Not paying writers is not a business model. Or if it is, it’s not a sustainable model. She touches on many good points in this debate, namely that only those that can afford to write for free will do so, meaning that we’ll increasingly be hearing from the idle rich almost exclusively.
There’s a voguish notion going around, espoused vocally by Chris Anderson as he stumps for his book Free but also creeping into job listings for any number of online publications, that you write for free in order to make a name for yourself and to get your personal brand out there. Once you’ve got sixty posts under your belt at HuffPo, the idea goes, you can take your “clips” and go find a paying gig or pitch a book or get speaking engagements.
If you are a good enough writer, you can probably jumpstart a career this way (though if you’re good enough you probably didn’t need a jumpstart in the first place), but do not operate under illusion that when someone invites you to write regularly for free, you are anything more than a cog in their pageview-generating machine. Paying writers nothing is just a way to increase profit margin.
Certainly, times are tough and its hard to make a living wage as a writer these days, but if a place fancies itself a business then it can afford to pay you something, maybe not much, but more than nothing.
If you can find no one to pay you to write, start your own website and write for free for yourself. You won’t feel like you’re getting ripped off, and any success you find will flow directly to you, not the pageview counters who cash the checks. The tools that let you showcase your own writing online are free, easy to use, and plentiful, so it’s worth putting out your shingle and seeing if anyone shows up.
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Eve Batey, founding editor SFAppeal:
I’m deeply ambivalent about the conversation on why or how people should be paid to contribute to the Huffington Post. I believe writers should be paid, and I intend to pay contributors to my site, as soon as we have enough money coming in to do that.
But I’ve also toiled as an unpaid blogger, and loved and benefited greatly from it. I was the editor of SFist.com, the San Francisco Gothamist site, for about two years, and was never paid a dime (the publisher would always reimburse my and our staff’s expenses, and they *do* pay their editors now, I should note). And I didn’t mind that at all. I loved writing, I loved interacting with our audience, I loved it all.
And a lot of good things come from writing for free. You are more inclined to make your own mistakes (and therefore learn from them), you can write only about what incites your passions, and you can walk away any time you feel like it. You have a platform. You have a voice. Isn’t that why we write, because we want to tell stories, to be heard?
So I have to ask, is it *costing* these folks anything to contribute to the Huffington Post? Are they only phoning it in because they don’t get paid? I doubt it — from what I’ve seen of the site, the folks who contribute to it are exacting folks who would write just as well with or without lucre.
I suspect that a lot of this “they should pay!” conversation comes from frustration based in how Ms. Huffington seems to be attracting capital (and is, presumably, profiting from it), and how this seems “unfair.” And, sure, I can see that — in my time contributing to a Gothamist LLC site, I heard that same complaint from contributors from all those sites. “They sit back and collect money while we do all the work!”
But, I always thought when I heard that, and think it again now, NO ONE IS MAKING YOU DO THIS. If you think you’re a total badass and “deserve” payment, go get a URL, install some blogging software, and let people buy ads on your site. Or join an ad network! If you are good, people will come to you.
But if you truly feel like you’re not getting anything — anything, at all – out of writing for her site, well, then getting paid 25 or 250 or 2500 isn’t going to fill that void. Walk away.
Look, I get it. Traditional media jobs are disappearing, 5 dogs leap on every freelance bone, it’s fucking terrifying out there. But the solution is not to strangle new publications with nickle and dime freelance invoices. Maybe people who write for the HuffPo will never get paid! But the good ones will use that very attractive platform to build their skills and their audience, and that’s better compensation that you’ll see at most places who pay their bloggers.
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Richard Nash, former editor in chief Softskull Press:
This looks like a good prima facia plan. Certainly the system for allocation strikes me as fair and consistent with how the site positions itself. Easily the most complicated number is the one without the dollar sign, that is: 20%. Knowing the book world, that number feels sustainable but the online magazine world, I just have no clue. I’d be rather curious to hear what someone like Choire has to say, since he’s more familiar with the cost structures of an operation like this.
The other imponderable is the actual corporate structure. Arianna has very successfully represented herself as the leader of Huffington Post, but I think that obscures a far more complex corporate structure—there is a lot of VC money in there, and the new head of the business is in fact Eric Hippeau, former CEO of Softbank, who gave them $5 million in Series B funding. They then got $25 million in December in Series C funding from Oak Capital. So the company is valued somewhere around $100 million currently. VC expects a significant multiple so they’re looking to make this a $300+ million company, I would guess.
All of which is to say, this isn’t about persuading Arianna to offer a fair compensation plan—I doubt that decision is hers.
What is certainly can be about is suggesting a suitable % of revenue to establish a compensation pool, and establishing a balance of quantity, and crowd-sourced quality in how that pool is allocated. So let’s throw that number out there, and see how all the rest of us find ourselves being able to match that. (Compare, for example, to Denton.)
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:42 am
Just curious: Does The Rumpus pay writers?
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:01 am
No. But we don’t make any money. It’s all volunteer except the managing editor who works for $15K a year, raised by doing events.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:33 am
I think it’s shameful HuffPo doesn’t pay, or that Google pulls the same crap (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/business/media/15illo.html?_r=1). As manufacturing jobs move away, I keep reading that we’re supposed to become a creative economy and be thankful for that. But that doesn’t seem to be panning out so much. Unless “creative” means how you (not you, them) position the fact that you’re ripping people off/taking advantage of them.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
As a HuffPo blogger, I would LOVE to be getting paid for each post.
Obviously.
I do it for the exposure and because I like being a part of the site and what they stand for, but frankly it gets frustrating putting hours into an interview or post and then handing it over for nothing for over a year.
Ah, well.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Is anyone paying to read HuffPo? No?
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
You’re not paying to read it, unless you consider being exposed to online ads a form of payment, but advertisers are paying HuffPo based on how many people read it. Why shouldn’t the content producers get a little cut of that, even if it’s only a nominal amount?
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I’m not saying they shouldn’t get paid. It’s just proving to be difficult to make large publications subside on advertising dollars alone.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Just because they cannot survive on ad dollars doesn’t mean they shouldn’t pay their writers. It means they have an unfair business model they are trying to justify by exploitation. “We won’t pay our writers but the exposure we give them will enable them to get paid by someone else.” That is unless all rags are using the same reasoning. Neat slight of hand.
August 3rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Also, Huffington Post has 50 paid employees.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm
HuffPo is a business that makes, or is in a position to make, serious money, and their ongoing failure to cut their writers in on any of it is among the reasons I’ll never pursue writing for them, even though I expect I could if I wanted to.
Yes, it’s true that nobody is forcing those writers to give their labor to HuffPo, but the fact that they are doing so lends credibility to an exploitative system at a sensitive time, when new business models for media are being worked out. The writers’ motivations don’t even matter: the point is that HuffPo sets a bad example. For me, this is the biggest reason not to write for them (apart from personal dislike of the site). Besides that, isn’t the HuffPo roster already more than a little too crowded for the promise of “visibility” to mean much anyway?
And I think the notion that a writer can strike out on his or her own, which both Magee and Batey suggest they do, is highly unrealistic. No matter how talented the writer is, an individual blog by a neophyte is extremely unlikely to attract very much traffic at all, let alone the kind of traffic that will sell ads at rates that will pay that person’s bills. From what I can tell, for most journalists starting out now, the personal blog is the functional equivalent of a combined resume and clips folder: you do work for free and for no readers, in order to eventually use it to get onto a site or a publication that offers either readers or pay; ideally both. (That’s how it has worked out for me.) Yes, some people will always be able to make an actual living off their own personal sites, but there needs to be a sustainable model for compensating the rest of us.
I’m an editor here, so maybe I should take a second to explain why I do so much work for the Rumpus for free: I believe strongly in the editorial mission, and there has never been much money in this kind of publishing anyway. What money there is, is being spent on obvious necessities (e.g. a full-time managing editor), and there’s not really even enough for that. In short, it’s a labor of love, and it’s not a real business. The latter can’t be said of the Huffington Post.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:50 pm
“…there needs to be a sustainable model for compensating the rest of us.”
Does there? If only the very best reporters are producing something worth paying for, why should the rest be compensated? That seems like saying, “lots of people write Star Trek fan fiction, but only a few can make a living off of it, so there needs to be a model for paying all of them.”
I’m playing devil’s advocate here — I have what I think is a response to that, but I’m interested to hear what other people think.
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Hey Matt! Good to see you here.
That is a good point to clarify. By “the rest of us,” I meant “the rest of us committed professionals or would-be professionals.” Obviously, not everybody publishing online is doing good enough work to warrant being paid for it. What I’m really worried about is the way that people who are capable of doing work at that level are being encouraged to trade their labor and time for intangibles such as “exposure” and “prestige,” which often enough amount to little more than fond notions.
How do you separate the professionals from the amateurs? Personally, I really don’t go in for pageview-based schemes, as they reward sensationalism and discourage long-form reporting. I actually think the oldest method is still the best: an editor’s subjective opinion of how much that particular writer’s work is worth to the publication.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
I think one thing that might help quell resentment, especially for sites that are small but growing, would be to reward writers who invest their labor into sites with equity. After all, if venture capitalists can buy into a site like the Huffington Post with cash, why shouldn’t writers be able to do the same with labor? Of course, it may eventually prove to be worthless equity, but it essentially costs the business nothing in terms of real cash, and gives an opportunity for writers to potentially cash in down the road through profit-sharing, a sale of the company, or stock through an IPO.
Tech startups generally reserve around 3 percent of a company’s equity for employees. I’d be a little more generous (I always thought that was a bit stingy of a percentage, especially since it means that employees would never get much of a voting interest as investors). And it wouldn’t be too difficult to budget — you can create an arbitrary number of shares, a time frame for profitability or sale based on your business model, and apportion shares per item, time spent, etc.
“Sweat equity,” if you will, and it not only salves the conscience of a publisher but gives contributors every incentive to promote and produce in order for a site to succeed — as well as some security that they’ll be heard in decisions affecting the business, since they’ll be shareholders as well.
Personally, I’m working on starting my own cult so that I can use the Huffington Post’s Health and Wellness section as a free publicity platform to sell my snakeoi…ahem “alternative medicine” and “spiritual awareness” products. Free high colonics for new converts! Who’s with me?
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Hi Jeremy and Jackson! I agree that editors are good barometers of who SHOULD be paid. But I think you’ll have a hard time finding many editor who’s willing to put their money where their mouth is and pay for what they can get for free. Some folks (like Eve) are just plain decent, and understand that paying writers is the right thing to do. I’m not sure that decency is something that writers can hang their hats on, though.
The idea of giving writers equity in a business is intriguing, and one to which I would give serious consideration. I am more ready than ever to join the cult of Jackson.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Jackson! What’s up? Everybody’s hanging around the Rumpus these days, it seems.
Offering stock options or a partnership percentage to employees is a time-honored way of rewarding the people who work on a business when there’s no money in it, and I think it’s an excellent idea for any business, not just media businesses. (I think I’ll hold off on joining your cult, but thanks for the offer.)
As to whether decency is something that writers can “hang their hats on”: with respect, Matt, I don’t really see what you’re getting at. Business is always done on trust: you make a deal with a person, and if they uphold it and you uphold it everything’s cool; if one of you doesn’t, you move on and don’t come back. For contributors (often called editors), sometimes money is part of the deal (like on Gawker sites or on Curbed) and sometimes it isn’t (HuffPo); sometimes money is offered when the piece is based on significant original research but not otherwise (Juxtapoz); and often money is dreamed about, hoped for, or maybe even expected, but currently nonexistent.
I don’t object to people working for free; what I object to is the spectacle of skilled writers willingly striking a deal with an avowed media company, with detectable revenue, that refuses to make even nominal cash compensation part of the deal. It’s entirely their business, but to me it seems like a pretty poor deal for the writer and a great deal for the company.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
By “hang their hats” I mean “depend on as an industry practice.” There will always be great-paying employers here and there, but when labor is cheap, they’ll be hard to find.
I do agree that it can be a lousy deal for writers when they’re giving away their product. But sometimes it is not! Like Eve, I’ve written for free for many years, and enjoyed all of it. (I also am grateful for having a day job that allows me to indulge that writing.) It’s my paying gigs, the ones I take for cash, that usually aren’t as much fun.
August 7th, 2009 at 10:36 am
The Huff Po gets so many hits that yes, they should pay something. I mean The Fanzine pays and it’s a bit insane that we do as we also make no money. Anyway, I think freelancers in general are getting screwed. The TV and film writers have unions and can strike and negotiate. But increasingly freelance work is considered mere “content.” And often executives and programmers don’t see the inherent value in good content, just hits. And want more hits? – have more naked pics of Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron. Publishing is moving away from print. It’s inevitable. Let’s just hope in the process, even though writing has been democratized through blogs (a good thing), that serious writers – who bring serious ideas to the public forum (in the old days a symposium, now what gets notice is vetted through reddit) – aren’t the lambs to this progress. Not criticizing the need to get more ideas out there, and exposure is great, but can’t you keep a good writer simply with exposure. Good exposure leads to good paying gigs, hopefully, hopefully…hopefully. As Ian MacKaye said when starting Dischord, they had no illusions that they would’t have to work second jobs. Many new MFAs are gonna have to accept the same concept in the future/umm…present days. It’ll be days of Men and Women of Letters again, ha, except without the stipend Virginia Woolfe deemed so necessary along with the lock on the door.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
whoops, correction, just noticed in this line: “but can’t you keep a good writer…” – there a couple of words got switched, wasn’t supposed to be a question, I meant to write “but you can’t keep a good writer…” simply by promising exposure. Regardless, good writers deserve as much exposure as they can be dealt and so I also wanted to note that Michael Miller served up a great critique of The Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott’s new novel forthcoming, The Adderall Diaries. See here: The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder | FANZINE (Books) http://bit.ly/SIiuV