Why I am NOT Suing the Huffington Post by a "fired" HuffPost blogger

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/14/966908/-Why-I-am-NOT-Suing-the-Huffington-Post-by-a-fired-HuffPost-blogger

By Mike Elk

It might come as surprise to many, but as a labor journalist I feel that both Jonathan Tasini & Arianna Huffington are wrong in their current squabble over labor relations that has broken out as a result of Tasini’s lawsuit for $115 million against the Huffington Post.

Over the last few months, many people have approached me about suing the Huffington Post. Nobody has a stronger legal claim than me since I was “fired” or dismissed as an unpaid blogger after I used press credentials obtained citing myself as a blogger for the Huffington Post to help 200 construction workers invade a conference of mortgage bankers to protest a bailout. (Only in 2011, can you be “fired” from a “job” that doesn’t pay you anything.)

While the ethics of the act are debatable, being dismissed or “fired” from the Huffington Post puts me in a unique legal position to claim an employee like relationship with the Huffington Post. My dismissal for “unprofessional behavior” shows there were standards and regimentation required for blogging for the Huffington Post that is more employee like than a volunteer type position. If I could claim my relationship with the Huffington Post was more employee like than volunteer like, some labor lawyers argue I might (key word might) be able to persuade a judge that I was entitled to back wages from the Huffington Post for my free work.

At the end of the day though, I felt it was disingenuous to sue the Huffington Post for back wages. Writing for the Huffington Post unpaid actually made me a lot of money as outside organization would pay for me to write on the Huffington Post due to its high traffic. Sometimes I even got paid reprint fees by outside publications for pieces that I had originally published on the Huffington Post.

Of the 105 piece I had written for the Huffington post, only about five or six pieces I wrote for the Huffington Post were unpaid. These pieces included a piece celebrating the World Series Victory of the San Francisco Giants, a piece about my dog Murphy, and an obituary I wrote when my grandfather died. These were hardly pieces that outside publications would have agree to pay me for in the first place since they were quick thoughts on random subjects. However I was grateful at the time to have a forum to get out these quick thoughts especially for the obituary I wrote about my grandfather.

It would have been very disingenuous for me to sue the Huffington Post for the work I did for them because I got paid for basically all of my work for the Huffington Post. Although I do feel that the Department of Labor should issue some type of employee classification on what are the rights of workers who writes for one publication but is paid by an outside source of funding. This is a growing trend of journalist getting paid by an outside source like a foundation and the Department of Labor should determine what type of employees these workers are.

FULL story at link.

[skepticscott]

1. His analogy to GM is a little weak

Writing (or "blogging", to use the snootier term) is a matter of personal talent and creativity, and you CAN enhance your individual career by improving your visibility. Huff Post, it could be argued, was providing a genuine benefit for people that it let use its platform, even if they weren't paid. The same could not be said for an auto company recruiting volunteer assembly line workers who are, by the nature of their work, essentially interchangeable as far as the buyers are concerned. People might start or stop reading a newspaper or a web site because Mike Elk's column does (or doesn't) appear there any more, once his reputation is built up, but nobody is going to switch the brand of car they buy because one particular individual does or doesn't work on the assembly line for it.

In any case, no one has a right to earn a living as a writer, only to try to convince people to pay them to do it. Giving away the fruits of their labor for free was always a choice for those people. To say that they had absolutely no other options is ridiculous. Obviously they were making a living in other ways while they wrote for Huff Post for free.

[frazzled]

2. Outside organizations would pay him to put articles onto HuffPo?

Well, I shouldn't say I'm surprised. But that's not what we call journalism. I wouldn't be surprised if there lurk among us people here who are paid by outside organizations to post.

I had been wondering why anyone would write for Huffington Post ... now I have at least a partial answer. And it's scummy.

[Old and In the Way]

3. Perhaps a disclaimer for paid opinion pieces is in order.

It might not change my attitudes on a particular subject, but I'd like to know if such a piece was underwritten by someone else.