Does Huffington Post Exploit Bloggers AND Mainstream Media?
YAY? Congratulations to Arianna Huffington for “quietly” securing some more funding for her “Post” from the original Venture Capital backers, as paidContent, who shares a VC with Huffington, reports it has “discovered,” from reading a USA Today interview of Ms. Huffington!
All is good then? NO!
The lead, front page story today on Huffington Post belongs, literally, to a different “Post,” the Washington one, really: “Congress to Rice: Stop Interfering with Iraq Investigation” headlines Ms. Huffington’s verbatim copy of the Washington Post paid reporter Karen DeYoung’s original story.
Arianna graciously offers a “Quick Read” of the Washington Post’s copyright content to the Huffington Post eyeballs she monetizes: A verbatim cut and paste of the first two paragraphs of the story financed by The Washington Post. A “read the full story” link is provided as well, in good Web 2.0 “compensation.”
BUT, is the sale of advertising against the reposting of the copyright property of others really a sustainable business model, for the entire Web ecosystem?
I posed the question to the IAB MIXX panel Monday on “Users vs. Journalists vs. Advertisers: Does Web 2.0 Destroy or Enhance the Marketing-Media Ecosystem?” moderated by Steven Levy with the participation of: Gawker Media, Nick Denton; About.com, Scott Meyer; outside.in, Steve Johnson; Avenue A/Razorfish, Sarah Baher.
After all, shouldn’t old fashioned cold cash, aka licensing fees, be the end game for news organizations that DO put their own money on the line to pay for the real “news” that bloggers of all genres, shapes and sizes end up piggybacking off of and selling ads against for their own account?
At the end of the Web 2.0 day, will the shaky economic foundations of the derivitave blogosphere implode, I asked.
Speaking from his New York Times experience, Scott Meyer responded that mainstream media is OK with the (not so) quid pro quo. Johnson offered that it is all about Google PageRank link love building. Denton, proud implementer of the VIA link at Gizmodo, for example, did not have an opportunity to respond during the panel Q & A, but acknowledged to me that the “question” is a good one.
The Huffington Post not only benefits economically from free “news” without paying for its production, it doesn’t even pay its own bloggers who post their opinions about the news reported by others, as co-founder Ken Lerer very proudly affirms.
The Huffington Post claims 1800 “bloggers” and counting. Nevertheless, Lerer has “no plans to begin paying bloggers. Ever,” as cited by USA Today:
That’s not our financial model.
BUT, what about the financial models of Arianna’s bloggers? Of course her celebrity bloggers, such as Bill Maher, can make do without a revenue share. The Huffington Post 1800 blogger long tail, however, must include many a writer that deserve and need compensation.
What IS The Huffington Post quid pro blogger quo? Its own version of 15 minutes of fame.
BEWARE: “Money can’t buy me love” and link love is NOT money in the bank.
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