This one is just too good to pass up. Last night, journalist Albert Kim posted a piece over at the Huffington Post—a site that famously doesn’t pay its freelance writers for their work—to voice his complaints that journalists and writers don’t’ get paid enough. Seriously. Apparently not alive to the mind-bending irony of the situation, he writes,
Writers create stories and turn them over to companies who use them to make money. When those companies reuse that creative content to make more money — think reruns, international sales, home video and such—the writers get cut in on that new revenue. The equation is so obvious and fair-minded that no one, not even the producers, is arguing that there shouldn’t be residuals. The fight is over just how much money should be shared.
Which leads me to wonder: Why don’t journalists get residuals?
Good question, Albert. Could part of the reason possibly be because some writers have no problem giving their work away for free?
You are so right.
Kim's first question of course should be, why don't writers (also known as BLOGGERS)at HuffPo get paid?
Huffington herself just today proposed a plan to make donations to the charity of a blogger's choice -- which seems to acknowledge that she thinks what bloggers/writers do and provide (otherwise known as copy, text, stories, narrative, or even, horrors, CONTENT), has value, the question now of course is, if it has value, why not pay for it -- you know the old fashioned way, by writing a paycheck to the person who does the work/provides the service? In other words, before we worry about residuals for writers, how about pay for writers?
Or maybe Mr. Kim has been breathing the HuffPo air too long.
Posted by coolshoes
on Thu 15 Nov 2007 at 04:46 PM