In April 2011, The Huffington Post, an online news website and blog run by AOL, was targeted with a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New York by Jonathan Tasini on behalf of thousands of uncompensated bloggers. The case, Tasini v. AOL Inc., raised significant unsettled questions about the rights of writers in the digital age. These freelance writers believe that they deserve to be paid for the content they’ve contributed to the site, which helped The Huffington Post achieve its $315 million sale price. However, a spokesperson for Arianna Huffington, the website’s founder, said, “As we’ve said before, our bloggers use our platform — as well as other unpaid group blogs across the Web — to connect and help their work be seen by as many people as possible. It’s the same reason people go on TV shows: to promote their views and ideas.”
The Huffington Post business model, in which most bloggers are not paid for their work, alarms and concerns many journalists. Does this model fit into the future of journalism, as news becomes increasingly online-based? Do bloggers deserve to be paid for their work, especially when reporting for a major online news establishment such as The Huffington Post? Or was Arianna Huffington correct in believing that The Huffington Post is simply another online forum for bloggers to “promote their views and ideas”?
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