500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
You see the wedding announcement? The Huffington Post was bought by AOL. Some money changed hands, like the $315 million kind, which is about $315 million more than I’ve ever been paid for writing for The Huffington Post. I’ve always viewed writing for Huffpo as a service and I’ve actually liked doing it for free. There’s been freedom in free, because you serve no one but your conscience and your inner master. Some things a person does should be like that. But when it comes to this acquisition, it’s the freedom thing that concerns me.
When I worked for NBC, I witnessed how an investigative producer tracking a story was stopped dead in his tracks by his own bosses. Seems that the trail he was tracking led to a company that was doing business with GE, and since GE owned NBC – they killed the story. I ran up against something like that, but not nearly as journalistically pure, while working on a story that later got an innocent man out of jail. While reporting it, I got some prosecutors mad. They had connections with the corporate leadership at NBC. The result wasn’t pretty when they dropped the hammer on me. So I wonder what happens when Huffpost tries to cover something the corporate overlords at AOL don’t like? Let me answer that question with another.
Have you ever seen a documentary called The Corporation? The thesis is that if a corporation was a person, it would be a sociopath.
Big-bigger-biggest isn’t necessarily better. I know you have to pay off your investors and Arianna Huffington had a few. I realize businesses have to grow and change. Bloomberg Businessweek has written that “the greatest business successes are often engineered by bold visionaries who altered industries.” Thing is, those visionaries don’t always marry off so well. Their suitors want to buy their success but can’t deal with their quirks.Take a look at AOL and Time Warner. eBay and Skype.
Big mergers and acquisitions can turn into corporate date rape. Ford bought Volvo, then sold it to the Chinese carmaker Geely. Ford also bought Jaguar and Land Rover and sold those brands to Tata Motors of India. When you start trading off a Swedish brand to a Chinese company, what does Volvo stand for anymore? Am I buying a Swedish-Chinese car? Of course, some big mergers do work. In 1965, Pepsi and Frito-Lay merged to form PepsiCo and they’ve been killing us with sugar, salt and carbs ever since, so at least that makes me feel good.
I hope Arianna can hang on to the Huffpost brand, which is rebellious, contrarian and yes, unabashedly progressive. The Skype guys tried to buy their company back from eBay, because eBay has no soul. Want proof? eBay allows puppy mills to list in its classifieds. How’s that corporate sociopathic behavior working for ya?
Give it a couple years and Arianna might need to buy back her vision from AOL.
500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
I am a dedicated hater of Disney. Some days I set aside an hour just so that I can hate the logo. It looks like a cute mouse, but it’s really a corporate monolith that lives and breathes the profit motive. Nearly all Disney lawyers have sharp teeth and scary-long fingernails, and Disney sends its representatives into hospital maternity wards to give product demos and take emails from new moms so they can market to babies fresh from the womb.
Actually, one part of that sentence is true: The part about maternity wards and marketing to newborns. It’s true: Disney is going into hospitals and giving away a onesie and taking the mom’s email. It sounds generous, but it’s just another corporate invasion of marketing into life, and they also put a chip into each onesie to program the newborn to like Disney products.
Actually, only one part of that sentence is true. The second part, about the chip implant, is what they wish they could do, because they are closed source, not open source.
Bear with me a sec? I can explain this. Disney is closed source because it protects its intellectual “property,” even through much of that “property” originated in the public domain. Disney will sue you over your use of anything having to do with Snow White, even though nobody really owns the character of Snow White because she was created a while ago. Disney and Viacom and other big companies take ownership over lots of free media and charge us to enjoy it. We aren’t allowed to mix it or play with it, because it’s “theirs.” It’s not really, but their lawyers have sharp teeth and scary-long fingernails. Closed source means somebody can sue you. Closed source is the mark of monoliths like Microsoft who are working from the past.
Open source is different. WordPress, which is what I’m using to publish this blog, is open source. Anybody can use it, modify it, play with it. It’s free. Open VBX is another example. It’s a free interface for internet telephones, and it works with Twilio.com, a cloud computing app which is not free, but open source and cheap. Open source is good and can be used to do good. Open Architecture Network shares designs for housing, schools and community centers over the world. Its designs serve people in need. The platform? A free, open source platform called Drupal.
Open source is the future and closed source is the past.
Closed Source: The New York Times: Nice people, but they’re rumored to be on life support. It will help their longevity to keep the use of their online material free and not go to mandatory subscriptions.
Closed source: Facebook. Facebook content can’t be openly searched. Give Facebook time – it will have to become open source to survive.
Special case: The Huffington Post. It’s open source content, because people like me can write for it, but it was just acquired by one of the most evil closed source companies, AOL. What does that mean? Tell you in next week’s 500.
Photo credit: David Ashleydale via Creative Commons.
500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
It’s better to work for free than for cheap. How’s that? Here are some examples that seem stranger than fiction.
Had an argument with your spouse? Whip out your iPhone and launch “Fix a Fight,” available for $9.99 from the iTunes store. No expensive therapists, no tense appointments with marriage counselors. Just the two of you and your handheld devices. Sound like fiction? “Fix a Fight” is real.
Demand Media is a “content farm.” They’ll pay you six bucks an hour or so for an article they turn around and sell to USA Today or maybe run on Lance Armstrong’s site Livestrong.com. If you make a film for Demand Media they will post it online and you can have what’s left over on the executive editor’s lunch plate. Sometimes it’s pretty good, like half a sandwich or something. Demand Media’s low pay makes professional writers unhappy, but Demand Media is real.
You can send yourself or anyone else an email from the future. Go to futureme.org and write a promise or wish, address it to anybody and date it for sometime in the future. It will be delivered when you are much older than you are now. Futureme.org is real and it’s also free.
Want a video of your company president explaining why your oil rig blew up? Pixability will send you a flip cam in the mail. You shoot some video of your guy apologizing to sea turtles or whatever, then mail back the camera. Pixability edits the video and you put it on line. Cost: $395. Pixibility is real. Those production companies that used to charge $15,000 for similar services? They are now fiction.
By allowing their content to be factory farmed (like Demand Media does) writers are only hurting themselves. By posting their videos for free on YouTube (mostly to Google’s benefit) visual artists are being economically blind. There’s an ugly kind of genius to convincing clients to make their own videos and then charging them for it but that business model can’t make for a pretty picture. There’s a market rate for professional producers, and below that rate you generally get crap. By the way, is saving your marriage really worth only $9.99?
Strange truth: People work harder and value their work more when it is done for free instead of being done for less-than-adequate pay. Rather than play this game, chasing the ever-diminishing dollar amount for online content, I have to wonder: Might it be better to stay away from Demand Media and the like? If you could, wouldn’t you choose to be paid well or else choose to work for free on deserving projects? Digital slavery doesn’t sound good.
Better to find the people who really value your work, whether that value comes from financial riches or in simple appreciation. Lance Armstrong has done lots of charity work for free. He’s been financially well-compensated as a champion. Do you think he’d consent to riding for $6 per hour? Why then would he expect writers to work at that level through Demand Media, which provides content for his site?
Now I’m going to send myself an email from the future. It’s free, but immensely valuable.
Photo credit: Indigotimbre via Creative Commons License.
