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I see that my lunch date (My lunch date with Arianna Huffington) and the Huffington Post are being sued in a class action for $105m by unpaid bloggers. The argument of the 9000 bloggers who are being asked to join in the class action is that all the bloggers who worked for free should share in the $315m AOL paid for the Huffington Post. See AOL to buy the Huffington Post.
Personally I think this case has no merit. It would be a bit like TechMarketView charging whenever our views were used in the FT or wherever. Sure, if I had been asked to write a column for the FT (as I have done) I would expect to get paid for it (as I have done). But that would have been agreed in advance. But we like being in the media because of the exposure it gives us. Indeed Arianna asked me to write an article for the Huffington Post. Getting exposure to 27m readers would be adequate reward for us! Conversely if we were asked to contribute regular columns we would either refuse or expect to get paid handsomely.
Arianna does actually seem to accept that great content doesn’t come free. That’s the reason they are hiring so many journalists right now.
