— This post from web elf Matt Haughey on Jarvis’ Big Idea is interesting, in a way:
I’m skeptical of paid journalists in general, and the media outlets that employ them. I’ve always tried to maintain a healthy skepticism of weblogs (especially post-Kaycee), but it’s usually easy to spot a writer’s bias, opinions, and general viewpoint on subjects that cross their site. Thowing [sic] money into the mix would no doubt spike my bullshit detectors, as the motivation to post changes from personal satisfaction to personal checking accounts.
It never ceases to amaze me that some technicians, generally of the Chomskyite school, feel that other professionals have an obligation to give their services away for free. Would this post sound at all rational if we substituted the word “programmers” for “journalists?”
But there is a segment of the blogging public that undoubtedly believes that blogging is Free Journalism, just as they believe Open Source is Free Software (incidentally, Open Source dude Eric Raymond is blogging now, as a 2A libber) But the reality of Free Software is that much of it’s written by consultants as a resume-builder, for which they’re compensated in contracts, and the rest is written by employees of service companies like Red Hat as part of an overall business plan. There’s no real difference between a programmer at VA Linux or one at Microsoft, except the Microsoft guy is better-paid. Similarly, many journalists publish blogs for the interaction with their readers, and they’re compensated by the tips they’re sent which they can turn into articles for sale.
The aversion to Filthy Lucre is characteristic of a certain privilege and a certain age; it’s quaint, but shallow and counter-productive.
Most of the commentors on this subject listed on Daypop are pretty threatened by it, objecting to money for blogging much more strongly than young Matt. Would-be blogger dominatrix Rebecca Blood sneers at paid blogging even as she flogs her “How to Blog” book, filled, no doubt, with information given to her for free by generous people.
BTW, did you need a “How to” book to get started? Did anyone you know need one? Is there anything that could be crammed into a book that you couldn’t learn better from seeing 20 or 30 good examples? I didn’t think so.
UPDATE: Matt’s post, as a whole, isn’t as bad as the bit I posted; he makes many criticisms of journos working for Old and Big Media which are correct. He errs, I believe, in placing the blame for sloppy and biased journalism on money, and not on the nature of journos and their bosses themselves. When gifted writers can make a living exploring their own interests on the web, without editorial boards and metro editors telling them what to do and when to do it, the world will be a better place.
But who is going to distribute the funds?
The well connected ones? to whom?
They will just become part of the establishment if organized money is involved.
NeuroProsthesis News
Who distributes the funds when you go shopping?
I generally give the money to the store whose products I like – or who happens to be nearest, not some central foundation. With some exceptions of course 🙂
I mean I don’t know in all detail how my tax money is spent. Some foundation decides what to do with it, I guess …
Here’s my model of pay-for-blog: you pay the blogs you like. There’s no Big Brother in my model.
Agreed. There is not much needed to set up a blog in terms of money.
Then of course it will depend on the blogger’s talent, time, resources, subject matter whether s/he attracts visitors.
A Centralized Foundation could actually do a lot of damage.
Our field is a good example. If you want organized exposure, publish in scientific journals, or write science news articles and send them to New York Times. If you want a daily log of what’s interesting but may be ephemeral, try a Weblog. If people want to see it, we’ll continue doing it, otherwise we will just keep the relatively static pages.
If they want to access all our pages, they need to send us their email address or get access through the Amazon.com donation page. People like these choices – not too many people would find us through some generic Web foundation (but they find us through specialized Web pages, meetings, articles anyway).