Quality journalism has to be paid for
The challenge of the new business models for journalism online, according to Jonathan Tasini.
For the first time in Italy, Jonathan Tasini will be a speaker at the festival in a panel discussion on Saturday 28 April entitled The economic sustainability of digital journalism: problems and prospects, organized in collaboration with Etalia. For more than 20 years, he has worked as author’s advocate in the US and globally; he was the lead plaintiff in the landmark electronic rights case, Tasini v. The New York Times which the U.S. Supreme Court decided on behalf of authors in June 2001.
He is currently engaged in a lawsuit against the Huffington Post. In February 2011 AOL bought the Huffington Post for 325 milion dollars. Tasini argues that the Huffington Post has generated enormous revenue by inviting people to blog for the site on a volunteer basis in exchange for exposure. The bloggers have received no money, even though their content has generated a portion of the revenue. That’s why more than 9.000 bloggers – with the support of Newspaper Guild and Writers Union – asked the Huffington Post for compensation of 105 milion dollars for their work. For the Huffington Post, this lawsuit has no justification since thanks to the blog the authors have obtained a huge diffusion of their works and ideas. Recently a US court dismissed the case but Tasini’s struggle still goes on.
To anticipate his speech, Jonathan Tasini answers some questions from Sydney, where he now lives and where he is now writing his fifth book.
What are the main problems for a digital journalist today?
It depends whether you mean a digital journalist who has a full-time job at a publication or a freelance journalist. For someone working full-time at a publication, all of a sudden their work load has increased dramatically—usually without additional compensation. The one daily deadline in the old print age has now turned into a requirement that she produce blog postings regularly, communicate via Twitter on a regular basis. There are huge new expectations—it’s the journalist’s version of speed-up on a factory assembly line. For the freelance journalist it’s a simple “we want you to work for free”. If the freelance journalist is producing material for her own blog, it then becomes a question of monetizing the content—is there advertising out there?
What about your lawsuit against Huffington Post? As you probably know, the Huffington Post Italy will soon be online thanks to a partnership with one of the main italian publishers. What do you think about that?
The Huffington Post is a cancer spreading its disease of “work for free” all across the globe. It benefits only its owners. It needs to be killed. I would urge all journalists to begin a boycott of the Huffington Post everywhere it tries to open, partly by targeting advertisers—you will lose business if you advertise with the Huffington Post until that journalist’s sweatshop starts to pay people.
What do you think about new efficient business models to adequately pay who produces online content? Is there any way around this problem?
“Efficient business models” is just a euphemism for trying to squeeze profit out of people’s productivity. I believe the only way to balance “efficient business models” is to have strong unions that balance the market with collective organization to ensure that people who actually do the work get compensated.
Etalia wants to be a solution for that problem. What do you think about this kind of model?
Any business model that is trying to put more power in the hands of individual authors and make sure that the people who actually create culture and advance journalism are paid fairly is a good one. Etalia is trying to match writers with their audience and I applaud any effort to try to put money in the hands of authors in a fair manner. I think that along with any business model must come some effort to support individual authors’ ability to market and place their work. It is the old adage “if the tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it…”–with the massive amount of content out there now, how does an individual author develop an audience? I have yet to see a purely technological innovation that can work without the human marketing machine.