[sixQuarks]

I can understand the frustration of the author, however, HuffPo is not a government or social entity. It IS part of the free market. I am a huge proponent of the free market, however, that does not mean the free market will be perfect. In the short term, there are fits and starts and cycles that everything goes through, but it is only through the free market that we will progress over the long-term.

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.

[untog]

But what is the actual benefit of the HuffPo platform? I don't think anyone sees "HuffPo Contributor" as a byline and considers the author to somehow be a legitimate writer. Nor does HuffPo give any percentage of ad revenue.

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?

[jebus989]

I don't think that's how the world works, you don't go from "I blogged at the Huffington Post" to President, but maybe it gets you a paid journalism gig, or a book deal, or it just fractionally helps the pagerank of your own site. Maybe it just looks slightly more interesting on a résumé than your wordpress blog. What do you expect to get out of writing about your interests in your free time?

Anecdotal example: I'm essentially a nobody but was approached by a literary agent after a HP blog post.

[gnaritas]

> I don't think anyone sees "HuffPo Contributor" as a byline and considers the author to somehow be a legitimate writer.

Well you'd be wrong; writing on there regularly lands people on political talk shows and helps them gain visibility as a writer.

[sixQuarks]

HuffPo should not be a writer's full-time job. It should be used as a platform to drive traffic/attention towards something else that you're working on.

[Borogravia]

No, I think the author has every right to be insulted and angry over the presumption that he should work for free. Just saying "well, that's the way it is" is intellectually lazy, and portraying a dominant middleman like HuffPo as a healthy part of a genuinely free market is simply wrong.

[autokad]

i disagree. the huff has a business model weather you like it or not. clearly the value proposition doesn't fit what the writer wants, but can you blame huff for asking? thats like being insulted because the ugly guy at the bar asked you out. what ever feelings you have from it are justified, but this writer goes and blogs online about their 'experience' wanting sympathy and traffic.

so yeah, the writer wants your business and what they offered was them complaining that they had a job offer that did not pay.

[vevoo]

There is nothing in the free market economic rules that promotes or guarantees progress over long-term, including journalism. The good economic outcomes did not come and will not come out of that rules. All econometric models will show you how other assumptions were required for that to happen.

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.

[aikah]

Huffpo was never about news anyway,it's about selling stuff, the Kardishians and ads.

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.

[chasing]

The writer has a personal platform: His blog.

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!