Gene Park: The Blurred Lines of Blogging

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Reading time: 5 minutes.

With this week’s launch of , a familiar media topic has flared up in Hawaii.

“Why should I write for free? My words are worth something.”

The issue was raised by a friend, Paula Bender, a former journalist who still freelances and has built a career in professional writing. On her blog, she just posted her to the free blogging platform mechanics.

She tweeted this earlier this week:

This is not a new issue. Arianna Huffington, ‘s founder who visited Hawaii this week to launch HuffPost Hawaii, has been accused of being a “.”

In 2011, social activist targeted Huffington in a $105 million class-action lawsuit. The case was because no one is forcing the HuffPost bloggers to do what they do.

Social media user brought up this point, comparing The Huffington Post to other sites:

First off, let me say that I have also been a professional writer for the past 10 years, and I would not give away my writing for free. It’s the reason I don’t even have a personal blog.

And the bottom line is this: HuffPost Hawaii and Civil Beat will pay writers for journalism. As a former reporter at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, I was a member of . I would never support receiving nuanced, research articles by journalists who aren’t being paid.

But the blogs on HuffPost (and Civil Beat in the form of Community Voices) work differently. The blogs on both sites function similar to what you would find in the Letters to the Editor and opinion-editorial sections of newspapers.

I can assure you that the Star-Advertiser did not pay Randy Perreira, executive director of the Hawaii Government Employee’s Association, for his guest editorial yesterday, “.” He may draw a check from Hawaii’s largest union, but no media company paid him for his extra work in writing that column. Mr. Perreira instead used the newspaper as a platform to broadcast his views.

The same can be said of Civil Beat and Huffington Post. We have sections that can be described as platforms for the community to use, or as Arianna called it, a “megaphone.” It is much like the bedroom vlogger using one of Google’s platforms (YouTube or Blogger) to rant about anything from the Syrian crisis to the service at your local coffee shop.

Despite the fact that newspapers have been around for ages, there’s still a lot of misunderstanding regarding the industry’s inner operations. People always think reporters write the headlines (copy editors do), or that the newspaper published something that was pro-this-or-that (when it really was just a letter to the editor). I feel that the new age of media has hit a similar disconnect.

Bloggers for HuffPost Hawaii have no obligation to keep up with it. According to the guidelines, they can post as infrequently as they want to. If they no longer feel it’s worth their time, they can simply stop. It is the main reason why Tasini’s case was dismissed, and that Huffington’s model is legal.

Does it make it right? Journalists struggle with that question today. As Lauren Kirchner of the Columbia Journalism Review , “If the only online news sites that make money in the current publishing climate are the very ones that pay their writers the least, the danger is that this assumption that writers will never share in that success will gradually shift from a singular unfortunate trade-off to the industry norm.”

Sometimes blogging for free can lead to monetization. Ian Lind, whom many of you know through , monetizes his blog through advertisements, and we’ve recruited him as a paid columnist. Gregory Ferenstein of on why being an unpaid blogger led him to success. An old friend of mine, Leo Babauta, blogged about his and is now a successful author.

Sometimes, the only option available is to blog for free. The industry is hitting hard times. Although it’s great that we have yet another vehicle for local freelancers in HuffPost Hawaii, the truth is there will always likely be more writers than available budget.

As food for thought, I leave you with . Robert Krulwich, who hosts Radiolab, offered this commencement speech in 2011 to Berkley journalism students. He talks about science journalists who couldn’t find work, so instead they spent many lonely nights at home, blogging away without payment and little recognition.

Suddenly, they went viral, they got magazine assignments, book deals, and later becoming the preeminent voices in their fields. “They are becoming not just science writers with jobs, they are becoming THE science writers, the ones people read, and look to … they鈥檙e going places. And they鈥檙e doing it on their own terms! In their own voice, they鈥檙e free to be themselves AND they鈥檙e paid for it!”

The entire speech is worth a read, and discussion over it probably deserves its own space. But this advice was given to the next generation of journalists, who are educated to enter the world with lowered expectations for them, and higher expectations placed on their work. It’s a conundrum they must soon face, and one professional writers continue to wrestle with today.

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