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The 26,000 members of the Newspaper Guild are no longer boycotting the Huffington Post over the company’s refusal to pay bloggers for their work.
The boycott began seven months ago and on Friday the guild released the following statement:
We appreciate the Post’s lively engagement in an ongoing dialogue. After a number of very productive meetings, the Huffington Post has agreed to draw a bright line in the sand between staffers and bloggers, with (unpaid) bloggers no longer being assigned stories or expected to cover news.
From what we can draw from that statement it looks like the Huffington Post isn’t going to boss around their bloggers anymore, forcing them to travel to events and report without pay on an “expected” basis. However the Huff Post still plans to make a push for their Eyes and Ears citizen journalism initiative which sends hundreds of unpaid bloggers to political events.
In an email from a Huffington Post spokesman they revealed:
We remain excited about and committed to our Eyes and Ears citizen journalism initiative. In fact, Ryan Grim in his remarks to the Guild at its yearly dinner last night explained the value of citizen journalism, and underscored that this complements the necessary work of paid reporters — it’s not meant to replace it.
With the protest over several labor leaders will now be able to blog freely on the Huffington Post including AFL-CIO president Richard Trumkaare and United Steelworkers presdient Leo Gerard.
Unlike many of my fellow writers who constantly bash The Huffington Post for their unpaid bloggers program I personally believe that if you are stupid enough to give your work away and you actually believe the “exposure” is going to help your writing career that’s your own prerogative even though you’re sorely wrong…case in point, name 10 Huffington Post writers by name and exclude people already in the public spotlight.
In reality nearly no concessions were made between the trade group and Huffinton Post management.
