Romenesko Misc.
The Newspaper Guild asked members last week to urge Arianna Huffington to “help prevent independent journalists from having to settle for third-world wages” and “to invest in quality journalism.” Huffington Post spokesman Mario Ruiz has responded to Guild president Bernie Lunzer and requested that Romenesko post his note. It’s after the jump. || UPDATE: Lunzer’s response is also posted.
From: Mario Ruiz
Date: Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 9:43 PM
Subject: huffington post pr reaching out
To: [Bernie Lunzer]
Dear Bill [sic],
As SVP of Media Relations at The Huffington Post, I wanted to reach out to you as we’ve become aware of your campaign targeting HuffPost for being unfair to journalists. We couldn’t agree more with your goal of ensuring journalists are paid for their work. It’s why HuffPost has 143 editors, writers, and reporters on our edit team. But we feel there’s a critical distinction between our editors and reporters and the people who contribute to our group blog. While we pay our editors and reporters, we don’t pay for the opinion pieces submitted by our thousands of bloggers. The vast majority of our bloggers understand the value of having a platform that reaches a very large audience. People blog on HuffPost for free for the same reason they go on cable TV shows every night for free – because they are passionate about their ideas, want them to be heard by the largest possible audience, and understand the value that that kind of visibility can bring (the visibility of being on HuffPost has led to our bloggers being invited on TV to discuss their posts, to paid speeches, to book deals, to a TV show – Greg Gutfeld claims he was offered his Fox show because of his writing on HuffPost). Our bloggers can choose to write for HuffPost – or not write for HuffPost. They can write as often as like they like or as little as they like. It’s both wrong and offensive to insist that HuffPost is exploiting journalists.
Cordially,
Mario
Lunzer’s response
From: Bernie Lunzer
My first name is Bernie, not Bill – so I’m not certain if you intended this message for me.
We continue to have great concerns about the HuffPost model and its long-term effect on journalism. I am not at all surprised that you see it as a simple matter.
If at some point HuffPost desired a conversation, we would entertain the offer.
Bernie Lunzer
President
The Newspaper Guild-CWA
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