Their ways? Arianna Huffington didn't cause the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted. She also didn't inherit HuffPo so all that talk about socialism and inheritance tax is just more signalling on the author's part. Which is why they chose him.
If some street hustler challenges you to a game of three card monte you don't need to bother to play, just hand him the money, not because you're going to lose but because you owe him for the insight: he selected you.[1]
He owes them an article on cancer, I believe.
To be fair, some people write for free to learn things, share things, and spread knowledge. That's why I started a blog. And virtually all professors, who produce work for journals, don't get paid directly via their writing, but rather via their home institution, and sometimes other means (like grants).
Universities are different than the HuffPo, but the point is still important.
Or to get exposure, which is a requirement for making a living in any creative endeavour.
Note: Huffington exposure isn't worth much, but neither is exposure from writing articles in most journalism outlets. That doesn't prevent every last writer from having a list of "published in Time, Newsweek, Mr. Peabody's Literary Conglomeration,...and the Washington Post" in their brag paragraph.
1 - get free content from the writers.
2 - get free marketing and traffic from the writers (who tell their friends and follower about their article they've just posted on the Hufpo)
Most of the articles you write are all hidden in some sub-pages that no one but your friends or google seo would ever find.
edit: formatting.
They pretty much do anyway. Anything saying "CNN has reported..." is basically just a rewrite of the existing CNN article, to just enough of an extent that they avoid copyright issues. Do slightly better SEO (easy because huffingtonpost.com is more popular than cnn.com) and you get all the clicks. The organisation that spent money on the original reporting gets nothing. Yay.
It's all about the traffic.
A large portion of the top content on HN comes from peoples' personal blogs. While these blogs often run ads, I seriously doubt those ads provide much income beyond covering the hosting bills. So people are obviously willing to write for free.
HuffPo realized there was a market opportunity in connecting people who were writing for free anyway with an audience for their content. I guess my biggest problem with their business model is that the offer seems like a freelance writing gig and could obviously dupe someone who doesn't ask the right questions.
So in the end I don't really have a problem with their business model, but their approach to sourcing content seems a bit disingenuous. If they were more up-front about the lack of payment, I would have less of a problem with this.
On HN, nobody signs over any IP, nor does the copyright holder necessarily grant a license of any sort. (If you doubt that, consider the fact that I can submit anyone's URL to HN. So submitters aren't assumed to have any authority over the IP.)
With periodicals, though, there usually is a contract with writers where rights are assigned to the publisher. Maybe the copyright, maybe just a license. There's usually something along those lines.
So the difference between HN and such periodicals (which may or may not include HuffPo) is the difference between merely sharing a link and signing over IP rights.
Publications usually allow the writer to retain IP ownership, but with an exclusive license granted to the publication for a certain period of time. For instance, "Joe Writer agrees to license to PublicationMagazine the exclusive worldwide rights to the work for a period of N days." Depending on the contract, many publications will also want the right to sublicense or syndicate the work during their license period, but will compensate the writer X% of syndication revenues.
I've never written for HuffPo, and I have no idea how their process works. I do, however, think it's a raw deal for any writer to contribute for free on an ongoing basis to a successful, for-profit publication. Not that there's anything illegal or immoral about that, per se. It's just that the writer is selling his time and product very short. Plenty of successful, respectable publications will pay a writer for his work. It won't be much; journalism isn't exactly renowned as a path to material riches. But at least it'll be something.
You cant,HuffPo is totally for profit and sold like 100millions to AOL.HuffPo is a giant ad page like most AOL "news" network.
How is that even remotely the same?
Plus:
> Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money;
Isn't that kind of a huge point?
Yes; but the point is that HN has value. They just choose not to monetize it through ads. It's not noble or anything; it just means that YC feels HN is more valuable as a platform for getting out info about their companies without ads.
For doing this they offer you a small profile with various links: to your amazon books, your website, twitter, an RSS feed as well as the "exposure" and (ever decreasing in value) bragging rights of writing (well, blogging) for the Huffington Post. You give them doctored versions of the blog posts you're writing anyway with a slight risk of hurting your own SEO.
I think everyone is privy to their business model but IMO it's win-win unless you're in a position where others are already keen to pay for your work.
Re: the last sentence, welcome to capitalism where we don't typically evenly share out the earnings from anything.
>>No party will suggest the rational solutions: if hard work makes us rich, let’s tax inheritance at 85%, so the children of rich men have to work hard too. But no: that would never do
I never understood this argument. I am not rich by any means,but why would my children have to pay 85% on things that I want to leave them?? It's idiotic - I worked hard to earn those things,why would the government want 85% of their value?? On what basis and logical reason? To make my children "less lazy" by doing so?? They can mind their own children - I will mind mine.
No, it's not idiotic. It's income to them they receive without working, it should be taxed higher because those who work for their money should not be taxed higher than those who simply have it given to them.
> I worked hard to earn those things,why would the government want 85% of their value??
Yes, and that's yours, not your children's. The only person you can give large sums of money to tax free is your spouse; to everyone else, that's new income and it should be taxed, and large sums should be taxed heavily because inherited wealth is anathema to democracy.
You can't have a functioning democracy and allow capital accumulation to the elite in such large sums that their children become kings with the power to buy politicians and affect law without having the benefit of having worked for that money and really understanding what it means to not be wealthy.
> On what basis and logical reason? To make my children "less lazy" by doing so??
No, to stop them from destroying society.
> They can mind their own children - I will mind mine.
You live in a community and it's not all about you and yours; try not thinking about yourself so much and look at the bigger picture. Inherited wealth is bad for society, earned wealth is good for society. You earned your money, keep it; your children should earn their own on their own.
This literally does not make any sense. I paid tax on all those things. My children are using the benefits of my work, that is correct - but I paid my duties for the money I made.
>> without having the benefit of having worked for that money and really understanding what it means to not be wealthy.
So why don't we send everyone for a mandatory work in orphanages or homeless shelters for a couple months,if its about teaching people a lesson? Since when is it the governments job to make people " understand what it means to not be wealthy."?
>>inherited wealth is anathema to democracy.
So why don't we ban it altogether? Once you hit 18 years of age, you are given a government-built apartament, $1000 pocket money, and off you go, enjoy democracy. Meanwhile, if you die, all your possessions can go to the government who will make sure that your wealth is redistributed to the greatest benefit of the society. Sounds like the right kind of democracy to me.
This is totally valid, up to a certain point. Let's take the other extrem, when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life. There is absolutely no need of such a concentration of wealth.
That's why inheritance should have a strongly progressive taxation rate.
Why not? If I, as a parent, worked hard enough to make life easy for my child, who are you to tell me that I can't do it?(I mean in general, don't take this personally) I have paid tax on everything that I made, bought, or built - why would they pay tax on the same things again??
Following your argument, we should stop giving our children absolutely anything - you could argue that someone's child should not be given a phone or a car,because it's unfair towards someone else who had to work for it,right? But then why do you care - I worked hard to buy those things to give to my children. Anything else is irrelevant.
I can give you another example which makes me hate inheritance tax with passion - I know a family, which had a house which was owned by them for centuries. And then, when the parents died,they didn't have a lot of money, so the only thing left was that house. HMRC enters the scene -> children have to pay inheritance tax on the house. There is no money left,so they have to sell their family house, purely because people think it would be "unfair" for them to keep it. Absolute BS if you ask me.
The inheritance tax is a very democratic tax and benefits society as a whole. And it is good for your kids.
See also http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/269796/listen-to-adam-sm...
Besides owing it to yourself, working for less than your right wage will harm your industry.
reminds me of al bundy, no phone calls today, but tomorrow twice as many!
Writers are unfortunately caught up in one of these free-market tornadoes, and to survive, they need to transform.
The author, instead of looking at this as "writing for free", should look at this as an opportunity to create his personal platform. HuffPo is paying him by giving access to their audience. It is up to him to take advantage of that. Yes, it's not easy, but it's reality.
The best possible scenario is that readers get used to seeing your name on the Huffington Post, so they return for your future posts. Great. You don't get paid for them either.
Can you point out even one success from this platform? Someone who started out on HuffPo and has become successful?
Anecdotal example: I'm essentially a nobody but was approached by a literary agent after a HP blog post.
Well you'd be wrong; writing on there regularly lands people on political talk shows and helps them gain visibility as a writer.
so yeah, the writer wants your business and what they offered was them complaining that they had a job offer that did not pay.
It will be actions other than free market ones that will allow or not the survival of journalism. Hope they will get it before they die.
Huffpo is just like TV.It's to make people's brain ready for the 5 minutes of ads during and after each show.
The OP should take advantage of it and not take that content farm seriously,because it's garbage anyway.
By the way: I assume you're a developer of some sort, since you're reading Hacker News. I need an app developed. My start-up has raised a few million in funding, but we can't pay you with money. Writing code is clearly something you're passionate about, and giving you an outlet for that passion should be compensation enough.
My e-mail's on my profile page. Please reach out!
This seems awfully short. Can anyone shed some light on why this is the case?
This is completely true, apparently. I was just listening to an Economist podcast episode on real estate in London. Existing housing property cannot be redeveloped for higher density because the existing long-term leases do not come up for renewal at the same time and must be renewable. On the other hand, the freeholder (the one actually owning the property) is in theory responsible for infrastructure but is apparently free from that responsibility in practice.
London sounds worse than San Francisco.
for as far as I could figure out...
If a for-profit business seeks to employ you without financial compensation they are breaking the law. If you offer your services below minimum wage you are breaking the law. If the worker's services are an integral part of the employer's business the worker is an employee of that company. If the role isn't an essential functions of the company you could be a contractor.
Either way you must pay wages.
Or can the text on pages like these be stretched to say exactly the opposite of what it says?
us: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp
Under the FLSA, employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers.
Employers can’t avoid paying the National Minimum Wage if it’s due by:
saying or stating that it doesn’t apply
making a written agreement saying someone isn’t a worker or that they’re a volunteer
Vrijwilliger verricht werkzaamheden voor een organisatie zonder winstoogmerk.
De organisatie mag geen (bedrijf) B.V. of N.V. zijn, tenzij sportvereniging.
De vrijwilliger verricht het werk niet als zijn beroep.
I'm curious now, how does Hufington Post (New York) do it?
This means that such sites will get only thinky veiled marketing.
[1] http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/12/09/a-note-to-you-should-y...
Before you downvote: I have hired hundreds of writers in my time, and am currently paying out hundreds of dollars/day to content creators at http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/
We pay $1 for each approved post. Each post is 50-100 words, has to follow our simple style guide, and must to link to an original news article.