Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free?

Back in my movie review days, the goal of many of my peers was to get paid for what we do. Even many bloggers, at least earlier on, hoped that someday they'd be able to either monetize their own blogs (best scenario) or get paid to blog either at one of the Big Boyz, or at one of the blogs being started up by mainstream media outlets. In 2007, a group consisting of Melina (whom I hadn't met in meat world before), ModFab, Tata, DBK, MaryAnn, and me attended a New York Bloggers Summit at NBC headquarters, where we were told that the local affiliate really NEEDED us to help them out by providing content for them. And what do WE get in exchange for the shrimp, the glimpse of what was then Conan O'Brien's set, and being able to say "Oh, and I also blog for WNBC"? Well, they told us it was "increased traffic".

Now I've been blogging here for six and a half years, which makes me one of the longer-duration low-traffic blogs still in existence. Traffic has picked up in the last year for some reason, from the stubborn 350 page views a day that we had for a long time to around five or six hundred. It varies depending on what inbound links I have on any given day. I don't charge for subscriptions, and I'm fortunate not to have to ask for money because I've never regarded this blog as how I earn my living, and I've never been enough of a dreamer to think it ever will be. I value my readers, but mostly I blog because I have to write as much as I have to breathe. And as much fun as it might be to make my living blogging, the nice thing about NOT doing that is that if I don't feel like writing on a given day, or if I don't feel inspired, or if the state of the world is too depressing, I don't have to. I had a shot at an editor/blogger job when I was laid off from my last job, but there were reasons that site had to delay a decision, I got an offer I couldn't refuse from Giant Multinational Corporation, and here we are.

One of the problems with providing free content is that people get used to, well, getting free content. We all saw how Times Select worked out, and now the New York Times is trying a subscription model again. The other problem is that you have to have readers who would still read if you charged them to read. And in an age in which anyone who can type can set up a blog, it's not difficult for people to go elsewhere, no matter now smart, clever, funny, or knowledgeable you might be.

My old movie review friend Mary Ann has continued to do the movie review thing even as film criticism seems to be largely going the way of the dodo, Roger Ebert's new show notwithstanding -- and is still trying to earn a living doing it. She's obtained some pretty prestigious gigs in the quest to have online critics be regarded as just as good as print critics, but since shrinking print outlets are cutting such things, it probably says more about the state of print journalism than anything else. Online critics tend to be obsessives about particular genres and aspects of movies. Nathaniel is the go-to guy for awards handicapping. Michael Dequina knows more about Bollywood than anyone I've ever known. Mary Ann has always been good at what she does. She's an unabashed geek, and while you won't find her reviewing the latest art film auteur out of the Czech Republic, she knows her pop culture. Nick is your art flick guy. Then there's Vern, whose work I can't even describe because he's all over the lot. But aside from a few guest gigs on larger sites, not one of these great critics is making a living doing it. Mary Ann comes closest, but even she has decamped to London in search of greener pastures (and tall, gaunt, brooding men with cheekbones you could grate cheese on).

And it's via Mary Ann that I found out that NOT ONE of those people whose names appear in the left-hand column of Huffington Post gets paid. Think about it: Arianna Huffington is about to pocket around $40 million on the sweat of people who just want to see their names and photos in front of a lot of readers.

That's just wrong.

It's one thing for smaller bloggers to write because they want to, though every blogger worth his salt accepts donations, and for some who have lost jobs and are over 40 (and Goddess help me I know far too many of them), such donations are a lifeline. It's quite another for Arianna Huffington, who already had more money than she can spend in a thousand lifetimes, to run what is essentially a writing sweatshop, except that even sweatshop workers get paid a few pennies a day.

This is an issue that seems to have gone viral in the last few days, and it's striking a chord. Yes, there are writers and reporters like Ben Smith and Jason Linkins (who writes a vigorous defense here) who are actual paid staffers. And despite what Linkins seems to think, no one is out here enraged because John Kerry doesn't get paid for contributing an article. It's about people like Mayhill Fowler, who decided to stop giving the milk for free last year. And she's not the only HuffPo writer who has had enough. Just Google "Huffington Post write for free" and see what you get.

I've spent the last two and one half years working my ass off, learning a new job for which I had only a smattering of background. Some days it amazes me when I hear myself talk at work, just how much I've learned. Some days I sit at my laptop at ten o'clock at night after I've been working all day and cry, wondering how I'm ever going to do this. And some days I just pray that this job doesn't kill me before I'm able to leave it behind -- or until it spits me out for being too old, whichever comes first. But at least I'm working for a company that pays me well and provides health insurance and a pretty good 401(k) match. My employer doesn't expect me to come in and work eighty hours a week for free.

It's one thing for bloggers like me, or like Skippy, or like DCap, or any of hundreds of others, to give our work away; or even for writers like Amanda, who's managed to parlay Pandagon into book deals and speaking gigs, to write for free. I've never pretended to be a "citizen journalist." What I am is an op-ed writer. What I do is write about topics about which I need to vent, or things I want my mother to know about, or whatever moves me on any given morning. I'm grateful for the people who feel that what I have to say is worthwhile enough to visit here every day. But what I DON'T do is write so that an NBC affiliate, or Arianna Huffington, or anyone else can get rich. Where I do that, at least I get some remuneration for it.

Cluelessness in Studio B

It's almost enough to turn you into a vegetarian, because now I think I understand how the cows feel when they're being fattened up for the slaughter.

Last night I had the rather dubious honor of attending the WNBC Bloggers Summit, held at the WNBC Studios at Rockefeller Center, accompanied by Tata, DBK, Mary Ann, ModFab, and Melina.

While the invitation talked about refreshments being served, I, being a person of not preposterous girth, but of some girth, tend to use the Scarlett O'Hara tactic of eating something before going in, so that I can pick daintily at a cookie, fan myself, and chuckle "Oh, fiddle-dee-dee" at whomever I'm talking with at the moment. However, most of the crowd immediately succumbed to the Inexorable and Irresistable Power of Free Food, causing a chow line to snake out the door of Studio 6B, from whence Today in New York, the local morning news show and gabfest, is Actually!!! Broadcast!!! Now, given how mainstream media feels about bloggers, and given that we had actually volunteered the enter the Belly of the General Electric Beast, the whole affair had a distinct "fatten them up till they're good and groggy, then slaughter them" air.

At that point, decisions must be made: Do you want to die WITH having eaten the brownie, or WITHOUT it. I, of course, chose the former, and as one would expect from being in such an ersatz environment, it looked far better than it tasted. Of course, that was the precise moment when a size 00 who looked to be about fourteen years old came over to our little middle-aged group and introduced herself as Erin, the "Interactive Content Specialist", who had not only sent the invitations, but encouraged bloggers to pass it on to their friends, essentially inviting the select few she had contacted directly to get others to crash her party.

It's pretty clear why Erin was selected to spearhead Capital N New Capital M Media development at NBC. She's young, friendly, attractive but not intimidatingly so, and because she talks in scallops like a Valley girl circa 1987, with the annoying habit of liberally peppering her speech with the word "really" (which she pronounces "rilly"), you can see that the suits decided, "Let's let Erin spearhead this. She's young and she must know all about blogs -- you know, that MyFacebook thing all the kids are using." I would love to know what was going through Erin's mind when the average of the crowd that showed up appeared to be somewhere around 38, with at least a third of the room being old enough to have conceived her ourselves.

Before enough of the shrimp could be consumed to prevent the night staff from having a treat, shrimp that they kept reminding the bloggers in attendance they had provided, we were given the special treat of being herded across the hall to Studio 6A, which is WHERE CONAN O'BRIEN'S SHOW IS ACTUALLY TAPED!!!! I guess we're supposed to be impressed with this, but while I like Conan, and believe he is Marc Maron's perfect foil, his studio, like the celebrities who plop their fannies in the ugly 1960's-looking furniture therein, is far smaller and less impressive than one would think. Of course Melina and I, the Morning Seditionists that we are, immediately turned to each other, and said "Look! It's Marc's chair!

Then we found out why we were there: It's because television news is scared shitless of bloggers, and local television news is pooping in its collective pants with terror, because the informal network that is blogtopia is able to get a story and disseminate it far more quickly than they can. They understand that the future is delivery of content online, and they also understand that right now we do it better than thay do. So, having spent what must be a boatload of cash to lure the Cute But Not As Pretty As Either Naveen Andrews Or Sendhil Ramamurthy Sree Sreenivasan from WABC, the suits at GE decided to make him the the public face their push to embrace new media.

So far, so good, right? But now we get to the pitch, and it's a pitch that Mary Ann, ModFab and I have heard over and over again during our experience with writing movie reviews online: You give us your content, and we give you "credit." That it took them a half-hour of business babble to reach this point, and that this pitch followed an opening statement that WNBC's site doesn't get much traffic, merely illustrates the problem.

It was perfectly clear that the suits in the executive suites at NBC have read enough in their business magazines and newspapers, and seen enough of the impact of internet content delivery in their bottom line, to know that Houston, they have a problem. And while their pathetic, if well-meaning attempt to "reach out to bloggers" indicates a commendable willingness to work with bloggers, rather than simply regard us as pajama-clad losers living in our parents' basements, they are still very much tied to their one-way "push" model of content delivery. The suits still not only believe that simply bringing in "blogger content" wills somehow make their own online endeavors magically work, they also believe that "credit" from a conventional news web site that they have already admitted few people visit is hardly an inducement. Needless to say, "cash for content", at which point a few people in the room other than the twentysomething goths and other assorted late adolescents sprinkled around the room might pay attention, was never mentioned.

The WNBC executives who held this affair still don't get it. The event was taped for the 11:00 news last night, and they made damn sure that the only so-called bloggers that received face time were those associated with larger sites, such as Gothamist, Media Bistro, Best Week Ever, and Gawker. Occasionally a smaller player received the microphone, but since these people tended to ask the really tough questions rather than hold forth on how fabulous new media is, they didn't receive the face time of the Big Boys and Girls of Gossip Blogging. The only arguably political blogger interviewed with face time was with the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal, which shows you that despite all the talk of New Media at WNBC, General Electric is still calling the shots.

As I looked around the room, I saw a sea of largely over-35 faces, most of them looking at each other and rolling their eyes. One intrepid soul managed to note that the problem with local news is that it only seems to cover fires and murders. The WNBC news program director noticed the lack of enthusiasm that met his shiny new bauble of Being Given Credit By "Real" News, and finally blurted out in sheer frustration after the crowd a) was not impressed with the fact that the 80-year-old Gabe Pressman's Sunday interview show is now streamed live over the web; and b) noted that we don't watch the network news because we're watching The Daily Show, "How many of you think we should just eliminate television news?" My response, echoed by most of the room, was "Keep Olbermann and get rid of the rest of it."

Throughout this whole ordeal, which ran nearly an hour overtime and from which one was not permitted to exit early, our little crew sat near the back of the room, snickering and snarking and waiting to be given detention. One woman from a small newspaper noted that she would have rather listened to what we were saying. But being able to meet up with online friends, combined with an interesting and useful conversation about political blogging with Jeff Feldman of Frameshop on the subway afterwards, made shlepping into the city on a worknight worthwhile.

But if the executives at WNBC really wants to know how blogs have become so influential and how they can move towards an embrace of new media, perhaps they might try actually reading some.

UPDATE: Don't take my word for it, read the recaps of the evening from my partners in snark, who quite frankly, are far more entertaining than I am on the subject:

ModFab: 10 Things I Learned At The New York Bloggers Summit

Melina: Welcome to the Blogerrati...I Will Be Your Hostess: Conan's Studio, Marc's Chair, Jumbo Shrimp, and then..Mind Meld! The Long Version...;-)

Tata: I Am the Passenger