Yeah! The title of this post is a quote from Harlan Ellison, btw, not simply my own frustrated outburst.
Visual Art Source, one of HuffPo's contributors has decided (belatedly) that they will no longer provide free content to that mega-website that now has AOL bankrolling it. They originally did because HuffPo gets 26 million visitors a month, but they're calling it quits now.
Visual Art Source, in the person of Bill Lasarow, lays down two conditions for contributing to Huffington Post again:
First, a pay schedule must be proposed and steps initiated to implement it for all contributing writers and bloggers.
Second, paid promotional material must no longer be posted alongside editorial content; a press release or exhibition catalogue essay is fundamentally different from editorial content and must be either segregated and indicated as such, or not published at all.
Lasarow follows up with this gem:
I am also calling upon all others now contributing free content, particularly original content to the Huffington Post to also join us in this strike.
My heart is warmed.
I really, really like Ariana Huffington. I enjoy her books--which I have paid for--and her appearances on TV.
She's very smart. Somehow, she's figured out a way to run a rather liberal blog without paying any of the writers who contribute material. Except herself, of course.
Even smarter, she's managed to make all us hard-working folks not notice or complain about it.
How does she do that? Smoke and mirrors?
I can imagine what she'd say if someone tried stiffing her!
So here is my favorite video once again: Harlan Ellison ranting, "They always want the writer to work for nothing!"
