Backlash at 'blogger plantation'

Some famous internet start-ups began life in a garage, others in a college dorm. But when Arianna Huffington decided to launch a website in 2005, many of her most crucial telephone calls were made from an expansive desk at her home in the leafy Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood.

Over several days, the energetic socialite called several hundred people in her well-thumbed Rolodex. She had a proposition: would they like to join a stable of amateur bloggers who would use the liberal-leaning site to volunteer occasional thoughts, opinions and humorous anecdotes from their daily life?

"Arianna was totally evangelical about it," recalls one person. "She would ring once or twice a week saying, 'Everybody's blogging! Are you? You must! Did you do your yoga today? Did you say your prayers? Did you blog? It should be part of your routine!'

"Arianna's a philosopher, or at least she once studied it, and her big catchphrase was that blogging makes you feel better."

The pitch worked. Within a few weeks, The Huffington Post had become the preferred pulpit of scores of influential public figures, from Hollywood movers and shakers such as Barry Diller and David Geffen, to political figures (Hillary Clinton and John Kerry), to tub-thumping celebrities such as Alec Baldwin, Jamie Lee Curtis and Mia Farrow.

Where the celebrity class goes, civilians follow. Soon the site boasted a thriving community of about 9000 bloggers, whose contributions were published alongside news, gossip and recycled viral content, creating a sprawling internet forum.

By last year, The Huffington Post was attracting 15 million readers a day and selling advertising that helped turn an annual profit of about US$30 million ($37 million).

In February Huffington cashed in her chips, selling her firm to internet giant AOL for US$315 million. She became "head of content" for the newly merged tech giant. Her day job is now in New York, though she often commutes back to LA (sometimes via private jet) for the weekends.

But with every success comes backlash. News of Huffington's megabucks deal sparked discontent among the unpaid writers who provided content for the suddenly valuable site. Where, they began asking, was their share of the wealth?

Last month one of their number, Jonathan Tasini, decided to get even. He filed a class-action lawsuit against Huffington and AOL seeking US$105 million in damages, to be shared among the 9000 bloggers who (as he sees it) had been "mistreated" by not being rewarded financially for their work. The case rests on allegations of "deceptive business practices".

Although The Huffington Post's bloggers were never promised payment, Tasini's lawyers, Kurzon Strauss, argue that the contributors did not expect the site to generate an enormous profit. Since their content has subsequently proved to be hugely valuable, they should now be entitled to retrospective compensation.

"Ms Huffington is acting like every robber baron CEO who believes that they, and only they, should pocket huge riches, while the rest of the peons struggle to survive," says Tasini, a prominent journalist and trade-union activist. Her conduct, he argues, is firmly at odds with her cuddly left-leaning politics.

"Arianna Huffington is a hypocrite. While reaping money and building her 'brand' based on books and speeches decrying the growing divide between rich and poor [she] is precisely acting to impoverish bloggers and create a blogger plantation, where her slaves work to build her fortune."

Tasini won a different case against the New York Times a few years ago, persuading the Supreme Court to award US$15 million to freelance journalists whose work had been carried on the paper's website without their consent. But a fresh precedent will have to be created for his new lawsuit to succeed - and most legal experts are sceptical about its chances.

Huffington called the suit "wholly without merit" this week, saying the site provides a valuable free service to bloggers by allowing their pieces to reach a vast audience. Sources added that blogging now only accounts for about 15 per cent of the site's readership; most traffic comes from its news operation, which has mastered the dark art of "harvesting" clicks from aggregators such as Google News.

The big question, though, is what effect the controversy might have on The Huffington Post's image. Tasini is calling for unpaid contributors to boycott the site, describing people who continue to blog there as "scabs".

Regardless of how Huffington fares in court, the case could see her lose in the court of public opinion.

HUFFINGTON POST WRITERS MAY BE OVERPLAYING THEIR IMPORTANCE

"If people go on Newsnight they don't get paid," said Arianna Huffington on a recent visit to London, trying to explain the difference between someone who works for the media and someone who merely contributes to it.

The Greek-born entrepreneur does not pay bloggers who write for her Huffington Post website and some of them have likened her to a slave master, while suing her for US$105 million ($130 million).

Do they have a case? It depends on how you categorise "content" in an era where almost everybody uses a keyboard and a camera phone. Did the contributors to YouTube - from children to professional film-makers - claim a windfall when the site was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion in 2006? No.

The Huffington Post is somewhat different. It depends on quality - professional, you might say - writing. Some of her writers gave their services because they believed her promises of creating a liberal alternative to the United States' right-leaning networks.

They didn't expect her to sell out to a media behemoth.

Others operate differently. Tina Brown, publisher of rival site The Daily Beast, said recently that "as a writer myself, I cannot look other writers in the face and ask them to do things for nothing".

In its early days, The Huffington Post could not have afforded to pay all its bloggers but, having acquired 26 million unique monthly visitors, it had moved into profit. Not everyone works for free: Huffington has hired 97 full-time editorial staff and 203 employees in total.

James Brown, founder of British site Sabotage Times, compares the relationship to that of a nightclub and its patrons. "They enjoy dancing at a club and being part of a great atmosphere but get angry when the bloke sells up," he said.

- INDEPENDENT

HOW KIWI BLOGGERS SEE IT

David Farrar
kiwiblog.co.nz

The law suit raises some interesting questions for blogsite owners. Is the value in a blog created by the primary author or authors, by guest authors or even by the masses who post comments on such sites? If the Tasini lawsuit succeeds, it could open the door for commenters on a site to claim a stake of its value on the basis that content is content, whether designated a post or a comment.

However, it is unlikely the lawsuit will succeed, as The Huffington Post stated explicitly there would be no payment for volunteer bloggers. The lesson for other bloggers, and maybe even media sites, might be that they have to specify that you don't get paid to comment on the sites.

Of course, it is unlikely any New Zealand blogsite would ever sell for $400 million!

Russell Brown
publicaddress.net

The obvious response is to conclude that the bloggers have been shafted, but I don't think it's that simple. The Huffington Post's profit-- and it's always been profitable - comes from ad impressions and most of those are driven by non-exclusive content. Wire stories. You could describe HuffPo as a ruthlessly well-designed machine for generating page views from wire copy.

The bloggers have generated relatively little traffic by comparison. But they did get a platform and a large potential audience, and the terms of their agreements specifically precluded payment. They retained their own copyrights.

I think collectively they did give HuffPo a degree of credibility that it didn't get from celebrity nipple-slips and new-age quacks, which tend to generate the most impressions. But I'm not that sympathetic towards their case.

I do think Arianna Huffington is going to suffer some significant damage to her image, which will affect the business. She might have been better advised to carve off a few million for an endowment or something, rather than pocketing the lot.