Union calling for picketing of Huffington Post

[NJMaverick]

Quote:Labor leaders claim that with 11,000 journalists having lost their jobs due to newsrooms cutbacks in the last three years, AOL-Huffington Post has risen to its stature by exploiting journalists desperate to establish names for themselves as writers, and thus willing to work for free in the hopes that they may someday find paid work. They say that the fact the Huffington Post doesn't pay its writers is an unfair business advantage that is sure to lower the standards of journalists.

In response to what labor leaders see as an exploitative situation, on March 17th, the Newspaper Guild and the National Writers Union both called for bloggers to refuse to blog at the Huffington Post and join an electronic picket line against the Huffington Post.

The unions are demanding that a pay schedule be established for compensation of all unpaid Huffington Post bloggers and that unpaid bloggers at the Huffington Post be given greater editorial control over how their works at the Huffington Post are used.

The unions requested a meeting with Arianna Huffington to describe labor practices at the Huffington Post. So far, Arianna Huffington has not granted their request for a meeting, but union officials are in discussion with people close to the Huffington Post hoping to secure one.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entr...id_for_hu/

[Eponine]

Very interesting.

In Chicago, a lot of laid-off journalists started the Chicago News Cooperative, an online source of news. It's at http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/ and has some of the city's best people writing for it.

I don't know about their compensation policy, though.

[Cha]

Very Interesting, indeed! huffington gets all the money and the writers get nothing. What was it..$350 Million? One wonders if she can even sleep at night?
I haven't clicked on huffpost for so long..she sold out way before she sold out.

Good Luck to the Unions getting that talk with arianna and their other requests!

[sandnsea]

Well I guess if the Times pays bloggers when they bring them on board, Arianna should too.

[RoyGBiv]

I already avoid HuffPost, so this is easy for me to say, but I would strongly encourage members not to link to it when posting here.

If you see a story that seems to originate there, chances are you can find it elsewhere, often in a better form.

[Ikonoklast]

"Dahlink, let them eat cake!"