Boycott Huffpo - Support the Writers' Unions

Some of us have been doing this for a while, but now it's got an official union call behind it, so you've got no excuse. That's a virtual picket line up in front of Huffpo: Do. Not. Cross.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

As some but by no means all progressives know, the Newspapers Guild and the National Writers Union have called a boycott against Huffington Post for refusing to pay its writers. Unlike unionized workplaces like the New York Times, Huffington Post exploits laborers desperate to get in print by offering them a byline without compensation while Ariana Huffington makes millions. The unions want the writers to get paid and to have greater editorial control over their content.

I completely support this boycott. I refuse to read anything at HuffPo or to link there. Ultimately, HuffPo is surviving on the adjunct model. Like higher education with its hordes of PhDs with no job prospects, there is a huge supply of writers who want to make a living in journalism. HuffPo offers the promise of gaining valuable experience and readership so that someday, maybe, you can make it big.

This is a dishonest proposition by HuffPo. It is almost impossible in 2011 to go from a no one to a big name blogger. The blogosphere is ossified. During the explosion of the medium from 2004-06, young writers could produce excellent work and become big name people. Then, by 2007, those were the only blogs people read. Today, those are the prominent and still young writers of the progressive blogosphere. And they aren’t going anywhere.

SNIP

Remarkably, even labor-oriented progressives are split about this boycott. Robert Reich for instance continues to write at HuffPo, arguing, as this Mike Elk piece at In These Times shows, that he is writing op-eds for free, as he would to the New York Times. But Reich is also supporting a large and profitable corporation who undermines unionization attempts, yet makes false claims to being supportive of social justice in this nation and the world.

Robert Reich is absolutely wrong on this issue.

From Elk’s piece:

“Now it appears that even leading progressives who should be setting a good behavioral example for younger activists care little about respecting a labor boycott with growing support,” says labor journalist, former CWA union organizer Steve Early, who is honoring the boycott of the Huffington Post. (He’s also a contributor to Working In These Times.) “Who’s going to take these guys seriously when they preach to us about the need for social and workplace solidarity but then completely ignore the collective efforts of the Guild and the National Writers Union to make HuffPo a more responsible employer of freelance labor?”

Wherever one stands on the issue of the Huffington Post’s use of unpaid labor, it’s progressives—who are both participating and not participating in the picket line—who will determine the future of what’s acceptable for labor practices in the journalism industry.

Indeed.