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From the President's Desk
May 2009
Hauling
by Russell Wild

A roughly hewn, hand-painted sign in a vacant lot close to my home reads "Free Hauling," with a local phone number written beneath. I haven't done a lot of hauling in my life, but I've done enough to make me wonder why anyone would care to haul for free. I've also done enough writing to make we wonder why anyone would care to write for free.

There's been some talk lately about the Huffington Post, one of the more trafficked sites on the net, and one that pays its freelance contributors zip.

Some writers have expressed anger and frustration that a for-profit website, never mind one with a decidedly populist bent, founded and run by a person reputedly worth millions, would offer no remuneration.

I must admit that my first reaction upon hearing about this deal was not one of great fondness for either Arianna Huffington or her operation. I read through several writers' newsletters and blogs where she was compared to both a 19th-century robber baron and an 18th-century slave dealer. These are unflattering comparisons, to say the least, and coming largely, I would think, out of fear.

Does the Huffington business model portend the death of our profession, and the turning of our incomes into slave wages?

No, says Lauren Rich Fine, research director at ContentNext Media, Inc., whom I found through the company's website, www.paidcontent.org. Lauren's job is to analyze the world of digital media, and its evolving business models, and to try to figure out what it all means to the future of the industry.

"Most of Huffington's contributors, such as Alec Baldwin and John Cusack, are not professional journalists, and are not in any way competing with professional journalists," Lauren says. "I see no indication that what Huffington is doing will have any long-term ramifications on what professional journalists are paid."

ASJA member Andrea King Collier is a professional journalist, and she contributes commentary to Huffington. As she points out, opinion writing was never a very lucrative venture to begin with. "Selling" her opinion pieces to the Huffington Post doesn't earn her that much less than selling her opinion pieces anywhere else. "In a way, I'd rather be paid nothing than $10," she says.

What Andrea doesn't get in cash, she makes up for in visibility. The Huffington Post, she says, offers her enormous "platform value.

In fact, the exposure Andrea has gotten on the popular website has landed her a number of paying gigs thus far, including, most recently, an opportunity to write regularly for Theroot.com, a Washington Post venture. And she expects more to come of it: "I am a poster child for being creative and piecing together a living from a quilt of opportunities."

And that's pretty much what Tony said, too. Tony is my neighbor who does free hauling. Not every hauling job winds up profitable, he explains, but some do. "I can run a refrigerator or dishwasher to the scrap yard, and get $13. For a washing machine, I might get $11," he says. "That isn't a whole lot, but I can sometimes pick up five or six items on the same run. If there's wiring to strip out, I'll get an extra $40 for a five-gallon bucket. It adds up, you know?"

I know. As something of a cobbler myself (making my own living from books, magazines, and consulting), I know.

Now I'm not advocating that we create roughly hewn, hand-painted signs that say Free Writing. I'm not saying that contributing to the Huffington Post, or any other no-paying or low-paying website, is going to advance every ASJA member's career, or is anything you should seek out. And I certainly hope that the Huffington business model doesn't become too commonplace ... or we're all in deep, deep trouble.

But I do agree with Lauren when she says that more freelance journalists in the future may have to do exactly what Andrea is doing to make a good living (and Andrea does make a good living).

"The landscape of journalism is changing," says Lauren. "Writers are clearly going to have to become more entrepreneurial."

As both successful haulers and writers today understand, being entrepreneurial necessitates creative thinking. It means stripping out the hard-wiring in your head, and remaining flexible in your career options. It means developing a working business model—just like Tony, Andrea King Collier, and, apparently, Arianna Huffington have done.

ASJA President Russell Wild lives not far from Tony, in Allentown, PA. He wrote this column for nothing. He can be reached at Prez@asja.org