CJR: Blogonomics

On the Job — January / February 2008

Blogonomics

Bloggers of the world, unite!

By Chris Mooney

As a journalist and especially as a blogger, I sure picked a hell of a time to move to Los Angeles. No sooner did I settle here late last fall than my fellow writers in the film and television industries went on strike. I’ve never done their kind of writing in a professional capacity, but the more I’ve engaged with the issues at the center of the current dispute between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the more I’m convinced that bloggers could soon find themselves making similar complaints against their own employers.

Yes, dear reader: the Bloggers Guild of America may be on its way. The dispute between screen and television writers and media conglomerates has its roots, after all, in the Web. The sweeping changes it has impelled in the media over the past decade or so have made film and TV writers feel less in control of the products of their labor. The current strike is the culmination of that: the writers are fighting for additional compensation when a product they’ve created for film or TV is distributed in some form over the Internet. Their current compensation? Nothing.

Bloggers often earn that same salary. There are exceptions, of course, those fortunate few who have become quasi-celebrities in their own right and found themselves, and their sites, snatched up by major media companies (which in some cases are owned by the same large conglomerates that the Hollywood writers are, as of this writing, striking against). These big media outlets are making money from the Web traffic that bloggers bring, via the online advertisements that that traffic helps to sell.

And blog traffic is growing. According to Technorati, which compares blogs with mainstream media Web sites using “inbound blog sources” (e.g., measuring how much a site is being linked to by other sites), the biggest media sites—nytimes.com, cnn.com—still have more linkage cred than any blog. But the blogs are catching up: in the fourth quarter of 2006, Boing Boing, a collaborative blog, had about a fourth as many inbound blog sources as nytimes.com (19,438 to 83,740), and The Huffington Post and Daily Kos had over an eighth as many (12,703 and 11,093, respectively). Tellingly, both The Huffington Post and Daily Kos were slightly ahead of The Economist’s site—and considerably ahead of The New Yorker’s. Even more tellingly, on Technorati’s list of the hundred most-linked information sources, twenty-two were blogs.

But blogs aren’t just part of the proverbial marketplace of ideas; they’re also part of the plain old marketplace—and site viewership, of course, translates into ad sales. (Profits add up quickly: A single, week-long, premium-slot ad run on Daily Kos, according to Blogads, sells for $9,000.) As top-tier blogs, in particular, become increasingly profitable, it will be fair to ask just how much of their proceeds are going to the writers who, ultimately, make it all possible.

Which is not to say that the answers—or even the questions—will be easy. How, for example, do you define and otherwise distinguish “bloggers” themselves? Bloggers are an (in)famously diverse bunch: grouping them isn’t just grouping apples and oranges, but apples and oranges and bananas and the occasional kumquat. There are the Andrew Sullivans, for instance, whose blogs are acquired by major media outlets (in Sullivan’s case, first Time, then the Atlantic). They become, essentially, contract workers—sometimes even staff members. If and when they do, an at least somewhat recognizable form of journalistic (or freelance journalistic) economics kicks in. As a freelancer myself, for example—though not at Sullivan’s level—I’ve negotiated contracts with several blog sites to contribute regularly and be paid per contribution. The rates for such work can rival or even exceed online writing for, say, political magazines—and it tends to be far easier work, given the informality of blog-style writing, its generally minimal reporting requirements, and its lack of much editorial oversight (which is, after all, contrary to the spirit of blogging).

But most bloggers aren’t as high-profile as Sullivan or don’t come from a journalistic background. They’re not being hired, nor are they freelancing in the traditional sense. They’re political activists or college students or professors or celebrities, or simply opinionated and informed citizens. In many cases, they have day jobs (or are retired) and blog for “fun” or out of devotion to a cause. They don’t expect to be paid well, if at all—or they don’t know that they should expect it.

These types of bloggers comprise a significant part of the core content base of economically significant sites like Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and ScienceBlogs (where I maintain a regular blog). And current standards for their compensation are hardly uniform. The Huffington Post, for instance, recently came under fire when cofounder Ken Lerer told USA Today that the site’s “financial model” did not involve ever paying bloggers. There’s a similar lack of compensation for writing “diaries” at Daily Kos. ScienceBlogs, by contrast, pays bloggers invited to join the network based on their traffic.

In short, it’s a Wild West out there for bloggers—even though, without them, the Internet’s frontier would not have expanded so broadly or so rapidly. And even though, without them, the Web-derived profits many of these blog sites are starting to rake in simply wouldn’t exist.

At the same time, though, there’s sense in diversity when it comes to compensation: not all bloggers should be treated equally with respect to remuneration. Most bloggers, after all, don’t draw very much traffic; neither are they part of a blogging conglomerate that is making real money selling advertisements. Were bloggers to organize, a threshold would have to be established between blogging “for fun” and blogging in a way that should be considered “labor”—between amateurs and professionals, if you will.

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Comments

Brian McKim

Sat 19 Jan 2008 11:40 AM

What's that old saying the Floridians have? "If you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes." There's a similar saying in the blogosphere... or at least there could be. If you don't like the business model, just wait a few minutes.

Every so often, there are efforts by some folks to impose the old order on the new frontier. These efforts are usually fruitless. Similarly, there's outright ignorance of the new paradigm on the part of some folks, resulting in a Captain Queeg-like denial, paranoia and bumbling (UMG's Doug Morris is often cited as a prime example of the latter.)

And then, there's proposals like this one. As someone who has published an online magazine for nearly nine years (and who went "blogward" about halfway through that period), I see talk of a union for bloggers as either a failure to grasp particulars of the situation we find ourselves in or a failure to appreciate the uniqueness of the situation.

The model for our "blogazine" (TM), at least in its early years, would not have been possible if there were a union of the type described above.

Do we really want a world(wideweb) in which people are called "scabs" (or worse), because they choose a particular path that is at odds with some organization's "bylaws" or "regulations?"

Peppone

Sat 19 Jan 2008 06:22 PM

um complaining about the internet getting more commercial that sounds perilously like the utopian whining of the nuttier end of the open source movement. Murdoc bought myspace get over it.

Pretending that the internet is completely different to the real world is just not seeing the point Bloggers who work for a company are a different kettle of fish to hobbyist octu who blog about princess Lias gold bikini.

Not sure Guild gives the right impression bit to old skool craft unionisiam that really doesn’t fit with the internet of course I’me biased being a M&P Activist.

But I Blog as part of my job and am a member of a union and a lot of the people who worked for PRESTEL and MICRONET where unionised over 20 years ago and a teletext page has similarities to a blog page.

GoingLikeSixty

Sat 19 Jan 2008 07:19 PM

I love good satire.
Very clever. Funny.
I especially like the part where the A list blogs share proceeds with writers. ROTFL
And... the part about a threshold established between amateurs and pros... OMG, hilarity.
I earn $300 a month from blogs. Am I a professional? HAR. I use my blog to release my inner smart ass.
Like Groucho said: I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member.
Jaysus, you crack me up, dude.

flajann

Sun 20 Jan 2008 09:39 AM

The problem with unions in general is that they tend to exclude those who do not wish to be a member, thus representing an unfair shutout to those who would not wish to participate in the unionism. It is anti-freedom and therefore I stand firmly against unions.

Elayne Riggs

Sun 20 Jan 2008 10:59 AM

You're absolutely right in implying that, for most of us, blogging is a hobby, not a profession. Other hobbyists don't get paid for their hobbies, by and large; why should we? This is ultimately why any proposed guild for bloggers is doomed to fail. There are just too many amateurs for the word "blogger" to have any meaning besides "writer who uses certain tools to post content to the internet."

Over on ComicMix, where I also blog, long-time comic book writer Denny O'Neil is doing a series of columns about why comic book writers and artists don't have any sort of guild to protect their interests. The answer is much the same; there's too much content coming out from talented amateurs who have no interest in making a living doing comics; the line between pro and amateur is so blurry, it would be a nightmare to even begin to administer any sort of union.

digbonian

Sun 20 Jan 2008 05:14 PM

Old order on a new frontier? Which old order did you have in mind, the rule of law or survival of the fittest?

when you've finished with the union bashing and the pandering to the 'true amateurs', you might consider the article's point that some people are making money--often large sums--off the work of others.

But perhaps you don't feel those who create valuable works deserve anything more than an inner glow at benefiting others so richly?

RogerL

Sun 20 Jan 2008 07:10 PM

"A bloggers guild could also, of course, work to protect bloggers’ intellectual property and help ensure they’re compensated for it."

Good idea. Let's call it the BIAA (Blogging Industry Association of America).

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