Arianna Huffington responds to lawsuit

April 14, 2011 Editor Journalism arianna huffingtonfreelancer rateshuffington posttrouble spots

In a post on her own site, Arianna Huffington takes time out from "aggregating adorable kitten videos" to discuss the $105 million lawsuit that Jonathan Tasini is pursuing against the Huffington Post and AOL on behalf of 9,000 unpaid HuffPo writers.

Huffington's tone is entirely dismissive: "First, let's look at the merits of the case," she writes. "There are none." She goes on to say that no contracts were broken, and sentimentally notes that the group blog is part of her "DNA."

She chastises Tasini for launching the suit after years of sending thank-you notes to HuffPo for the exposure he was getting from writing for them:

It seems that AOL's purchase of HuffPost suddenly opened his eyes to the fact that we are a business. I guess he'd missed the ads that appeared on the same page as his blog posts the 216 times he decided, of his own free will, to post something on our site.

Huffington's response is a direct message to Tasini, and other unpaid HuffPo writers, that she's fully entrenched in her belief that there is nothing wrong with using free content to build a profitable online business. Changing her mind, it seems, is going to take more than what some are calling a frivolous lawsuit.

Freelance court interpreters consider unionizing

April 07, 2011 Editor Compensation collective actioncourt interpreterscwa canadafreelancer ratesunion organizing

Ottawa-area freelance court interpreters, who provide an essential service in court cases involving non-English-speaking individuals, are continuing a work stoppage that began in February and are considering joining a union, according to this story from the Lawyers Weekly.Those involved in the group action, with the backing of the Court…

Not just for laughs

April 06, 2011 Editor Compensation collective actionfreelancer rateshuffington post

[caption id="attachment_686" align="alignnone" width="501" caption="Screengrab from Thecomedystore.com"][/caption]The story of a group of comedians gigging at the Comedy Store in the '70s is being compared to the battle for fair compensation currently being fought by unpaid Huffington Post writers. After working for free for six years, the comics…

St. Joseph Media keeps mum about Torontoist plans

April 05, 2011 Editor Compensation digitalfreelancer ratespublishingst. joseph mediatorontoist

By Ian HarveyThree weeks after the announcement Torontoist had got hitched to St. Joseph Media, there’s a cone of silence on what the future holds for the newlyweds.Attempts by Story Board to interview the principals involved, Torontoist publisher Ken Hunt and St. Joe’s president Doug Knight, received short email responses or were ignored…

Asking Arianna for change

March 30, 2011 Editor Compensation aolcollective actiondigitalfreelancer ratesgetting paidhuffington postnewspaper guild-cwa

[caption id="attachment_622" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="Graphic from the Guild Freelancers of the California Media Workers Guild, posted on the Newspaper Guild's "][/caption]Open letters to publications' management are a last-ditch tactic to right wrongs and spur change—but as we've seen recently, they can be effective.Now, adding…

CWG’s Derek Finkle on Nino Ricci’s letter to the Globe

March 24, 2011 Editor Compensation digitalfreelance contractsfreelancer ratesgetting paidglobe and mailnewspaperstrouble spots

If you missed it yesterday, familiarize yourself with Nino Ricci's open letter to the Globe before reading on.We asked Derek Finkle, founder of the Canadian Writers Group, which represents independent writers, about typical compensation for freelance travel writing and whether it's common for dailies to leave an invoice unpaid for six months, as…

Toronto Standard aims to give web writers a fair shake

March 23, 2011 Editor Journalism digitalfreelancer ratestoronto standard

[caption id="attachment_592" align="alignnone" width="562" caption="Toronto Standard pre-tweets its own birth."][/caption]Launching April 7, Toronto Standard will join an already crowded field of sites presenting Toronto news. But rather than follow the recent trend of focusing on the hyper-local, the site plans to look outward, editorial director…

Nino Ricci gives the Globe a thrashing

March 23, 2011 Editor Journalism freelance contractsfreelancer ratesgetting paidglobe and mailnewspaperstrouble spots

In an open letter to the Globe posted on his own site, author Nino Ricci feigns concern for the paper's financial situation while castigating them for failing to pay him for a travel story published six months ago.Ricci, award-winning novelist and former president of PEN Canada, states in his letter that after the paper let him charge travel…

Freelance court interpreters take action (updated)

March 22, 2011 Editor Compensation collective actionfreelancer ratestrouble spots

In most cases, if a journalist makes an error, the consequences are little more than embarrassment and a correction. But court interpreters go to work knowing that their mistakes could send someone an innocent person to jail or set a guilty defendent free.It's a high-pressure role, and a group of freelance court interpreters in Ottawa say their…

Newspaper Guild-CWA advocating on behalf of unpaid HuffPo writers

March 17, 2011 Editor Compensation collective actiondigitalfreelancer rateshuffington postnewspaper guild-cwatrouble spots

Poynter.org has posted a press release from the Newspaper Guild-CWA in which it asks writers who contribute work to the Huffington Post for free to cease doing so until the company agrees to start compensating them.The Guild's request follows the Huffington's Post's recent $350 million buyout by AOL, and it's not the first call for change. They are…