Writer and scholar Clay Shirky writes about how ways of organizing people, and consequently organizations, are being changed in Here Comes Everybody. Using Flickr (now owned by Yahoo!) as an example, Shirky writes that “the costs of all kinds of group activity – sharing, cooperative and collective action – have fallen so far so fast” and given rise to a new way of making things happen – namely, “action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive.” (Shirky, 47) Here’s the “Coney Island Mermaid Parade” that Shirky describes and a link to the group on Flickr that now hosts more than 2,900 photos, including this one of a "sea urchin" from moriza:
As I read Shirky, the example of collective action and collaboration that came to my mind was Huffington Post. “HuffPo” launched in 2005 and grew as independent bloggers, often unpaid, contributed content, creating a “citizen-powered online news organization” (Wikipedia). When its founder sold HuffPo to AOL in early 2011 for $315 million, the National Writers Union and others launched a boycott of the Huffington Post arguing that the founder benefited unfairly from the unpaid labor of others. Is the sale to AOL an example of “The Tragedy of Commons” where one person subverts the common good? (Shirky, 51) Do the writers, who voluntarily donated their writing, gaining a publishing platform, have a legitimate claim?
3 comments:
Wow, it does indeed seem a tragedy. I had always thought that the company hired its writers, but I only became aware of Huffington Post about a year ago. I know a couple of the professors from Luther Seminary write for it and I just assumed that they were paid (maybe there's an option to be paid or not?). Knowing the history of how the site came into existence and this recent sale is certainly off-putting, but I wonder if it will gain enough attention or for that matter, be problematic enough that people will quit reading it because of this.
I was reminded of how Shirky talked about how love for a particular topic was what keeps Wikipedia from being corrupted by the open editing policy. I wonder if love for the articles written free of charge on Huffington post will be hurt enough that people will turn away from it. I'm intrigued to know that at one point the articles were written without the influence of money. Although they are still of a high quality, one has to wonder now if the authors are passionate enough on their given topics that they would contribute without pay.
I could certainly see the argument of those against the sale of the site, but I had never visited on account of the free authorship, it was just to hear the news on a particular topic. Knowing the history of the company is enough to make me exclude it from my list of news sources though. I might just be a raindrop in the ocean, but Shirky's book has made it clear that justice movements are quite possible in this day in age originating from one blog post such as yours.
This is such an important question you're asking, and I think it's indicative of the ways our media are constantly changing as new technologies become available. I had only just learned of the issues with HuffPost, and have decided to try hard not to link to it even though some of my friends and colleagues write there. But will that kind of boycott matter? Hard to say.
It's a challenge to figure out how to live justly as new media unfold.
Your comments about the Huffington Post user content site got me thinking. People are in an uproar thinking that they created the value and someone else got the profit. In a sense, I think they’re right. But isn’t that what they signed up for?
As an alternate example, Wikipedia lists the revenue for Facebook as $2billion in 2010. Granted, that value comes from advertising on the site, but without the immense user activity, that advertising would be irrelevant. However, the users on Facebook don’t benefit from the activity. So one could argue that Facebook is getting paid for the activity of the users. I would argue that. But that being said, users know what they are signing up for.
I think the HuffPo situation is similar. Yes, the people spent the time and energy to post content. Yes, the management made money off the sale. But what was sold was the site itself, not the news that was reported there. In my humble opinion, the people at HuffPo managed to market a pretty darn good idea.
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