Why our writers are on strike against the Huffington Post

[The Northerner]

For the better part of the last year, Visual Art Source reposted a number of the articles that we publish in our monthly digest, ArtScene, as well as in our Visual Art Source weekly newsletter and on our website to a nationally branded website owned and operated by the author of a book published last year entitled Third World America: How our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream.

That author is Arianna Huffington, the website in question being the Huffington Post. After reflecting on and discussing with our writers and editors the array of professional and ethical issues implied by that affiliation, we have made the decision to suspend any further contributions of our writers' work. Accordingly, we published a strike notice.

Two central concerns have troubled us from the start: is exposure to Huffington Post's extensive audience and widely recognised brand simply a fair exchange for not being paid a penny? Is it acceptable for serious writing to appear alongside press releases, shill pieces paid to promote a third party and junk journalism – without anything to distinguish them as such? We went to our writers before beginning to post last year and the response was overwhelming. Go ahead and post. Yet, less than one year later, the reaction to our possible withdrawal was just as decisive in the opposite direction. As publisher, I fully endorse that decision.

Visual Art Source and our partner publications, ArtScene and art ltd, pay our writers for the professional work they contribute. We help them reach many tens of thousands of art professional and fans, and we do not pay them "in kind" for that exposure. Not just because they are paid, but in keeping with the ethos of payment for due diligence, these writers regularly perform as the professionals they are. Their opinions are vested in experience. And because we pay, a standard of quality and know-how is applied to the content that gets published.

And because the Huffington Post does not pay, they invite contributors to publish as much or as little as they like on whatever subjects they like. Does this add up to freedom or mere free-for-all? You decide.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/05/huffington-post-aol