Huffington Post Contributors Go on Strike | Hacker News Reader

Huffington Post Contributors Go on Strike

thewrap.com

31 pointsbconway13 comments

This dispute will be worthwhile to follow. Lets look at the 'value' equation here:

Value received: Reader gets content to view/read. Price paid: Advertisements are pushed with content. Market Evaluation: CPM

The more advertisements and advertising 'gimmicks' (click throughs, pop unders, talking flash) that readers deal with raises their perceived 'cost' of the content.

The more Ad clicks, views, mouse-overs, demographic sharing/tracking the web site gets increases the revenue generated by the content.

Costs associated with generating the content - CMS operation, rights clearance (author, images, other media).

There is lots of evidence that as people put more and more intrusive advertisements on their web site readership goes down (higher 'cost') and mitigation efforts (AdBlock, Flashblock) go up (user attempt to lower the cost). Interesting experiment at Ars with blocking content if Ads are blocked: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking...

Versus the paywalls (very explicit cost structure for readers).

All this adds data points to the questions of 'can readers distinguish between good content and not-good content' and what is the marginal value of 'good content' vs 'farmed content'.

Really fascinating to watch these systems getting tested and evaluated in real time in the real world.

I agree that this will be fascinating to watch, but I'm also surprised it took this long. From the moment the sale to AOL was announced I've been waiting for the backlash from the writers, asking for their piece of the pie.

Also fascinating to see how the free market will settle on the price of the content writers' services. Historically, one could argue that digital ecosystems have placed a clear value on timeliness over quality and depth, with some notable exceptions.

Unfortunately, I just don't see much of a future for long-form, written journalism on the web as a viable profession, unless you are the owner-operator of the content shop or blog. When people want timeliness, they'll go to timely sources. When they want depth, they'll go to message boards or social media channels. The latter are much more dynamic and "living" sources of deep information than static articles are.

Finally, the HuffPo contributors need to keep in mind that they tied their own bonds here. They volunteered their services for free in the first place. If you place such a low value on your own work, what do you expect you're going to get paid for it?

I have sympathy for the writers in this situation, and for writers in general. In many respects, though not professionally, I count myself among their ranks. But the way people consume information is changing fundamentally, and journalism gigs as they've traditionally existed are anachronisms.

Best way to get paid, if you're determined to be an individual content writer/contributor? Build your brand, market the hell out of yourself, and build a following. The size of your following is your most tangible indicator of worth on the market for your services.

"Unfortunately, I just don't see much of a future for long-form, written journalism on the web as a viable profession, unless you are the owner-operator of the content shop or blog. When people want timeliness, they'll go to timely sources. When they want depth, they'll go to message boards or social media channels. The latter are much more dynamic and "living" sources of deep information than static articles are."

I think the Jury is still out on this. I subscribe to the Economist and read it primarily digitally on my iPad. I suspect a lower priced 'digital only' Economist will bring in some additional revenue there. And I don't think we have yet seen a 'long form' journalism vehicle which is digital only so its still very hard to tease apart the costs vs revenue. (if there is one then I'm not yet aware of it)

Would love to hear about such a project if one exists.

Fair point. By "long-form," for the purposes of my post, I was referring really to anything longer than a handful of paragraphs. The definition of "long-form" itself is changing and is arguably becoming meaningless. But I'd consider HuffPo to be an example of what I was attempting to refer to.

you see a lot of this wailing and gnashing in the media blog echo chamber, but since this is HN I'd like to point out how blatantly off base it is.

one, contributors to "the blog" (the left column on the homepage) are the internet equivalent of a "letters to the editor" page or a cable news guest brought on to have their (employers) say.[1]

two, the traffic generated by those posts is a small fraction of overall traffic. Nate Silver did some spitball math on it a week or two ago and came away with the right understanding.[2]

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/10/huffington-post-blo...

[2] http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the-econ...

It's kind of mind-boggling that the most left-wing, union supporting, socialist website on the planet pays the people who produces the content on their site _zero_. I'm mostly progressive/left-wing/Canadian, but that fact alone makes my want to switch sides in an instant.

Really? Huffington Post is the most leftist/socialist site on the planet? Maybe in the eyes of Fox News viewers. Arianna Huffington herself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington) is very, very far from being affiliated with socialism.

Here are a few (well worth reading) sites that are actually closer to your description:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet

http://monthlyreview.org/

http://links.org.au/

Huffington Post likes to post headlines and blog posts praising all things green energy, Obama, and NBC. The bias is pretty obvious. The original point of the site was to be a left-wing alternative to Drudge Report--even the name is a play off of it. Ariana Huffington herself has spoken at several Democrat events over the years and is considered politically left-of-center.

A hard lesson to learn the hard way, but there you are. Everyone should have seen this coming as a likely potential outcome for the site.

Either get an agreement ahead of time, or run your own site.

And this being said, I'll bet most authors' takes would turn out to be surprisingly small.

The argument for Huff Post (and others) has always been "exposure" but I can't recall ever following a contributing author to other sites from Huff Post (which I don't frequent as much lately) or any other news site.

Too bad Atlas Shrugged Part 1 has already been wrapped. They could have written into the script the high-minded progressive talking head convincing others to contribute their labor "for the cause" cashing out for millions. This is synchronicity.

As I recall, HuffPo's traffic isn't dominated by the blogs, it's dominated by being a link aggregator / discussion site. In terms of its web genes it has more in common with Slashdot than DailyKos.

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