A group of bloggers is suing Huffington Post, founder Arianna Huffington, and AOL for $105 million, saying they deserve to be paid more - or ever paid at all - for the content they've contributed to the site. The bloggers are miffed by the fact that Arianna Huffington sold the site for $315 million to AOL and didn't offer to share any of the windfall with the 9,000 or so bloggers who have contributed free content for the last four years. On the other hand, Huffington never promised to pay those bloggers anything, so no contract has been violated.
The plaintiffs actually aren't challenging HuffPo on contract terms. In a press conference, they said they're suing under common law based on a claim of "unjust enrichment." In other words, what Huffington did is just wrong, despite the fact that there was no legal prohibition against her doing it.
Spokesman Jonathan Tasini (above left), who is described as both a union organizer and journalist, had some eyebrow-singeing words for Ms. Huffington. "We are going to make Arianna Huffington a pariah in the progressive community," he said. "No one will blog for her. She'll never [be invited to] speak. We will picket her home. We're going to make it clear that, until you do justice here, your life is going to be a living hell." Restraining order, anyone?
Journalists Deserting Bay Area
The San Francisco Peninsula Press Club surveyed its membership and found that there wasn't much membership left to survey. A non-scientific census found that 45% of the 700 journalists "accepted a buyout or voluntarily left their job during a period of downsizing during the past 10 years," according to a news item posted in the San Francisco Business Times. The wording is vague about whether that means those laid-off journos are still out of work - and only 3% of respondents said they're currently unemployed - but the research is being interpreted as a sign that nearly half the journalists in the San Francisco area have fled during the last decade.
The findings are unsurprising in light of the massive hits Bay Area newspapers have taken in the face of electronic competition. The San Jose Mercury News has cut well over half its staff in recent years, and the San Francisco Chronicle was only weeks away from being shuttered by Hearst before heavy cost cuts spared its life two years ago. Neither is at all well.
Miscellany
Fortunately, those laid-off journalists won't have to pay as much for their Amazon Kindles as they used to. Amazon just introduced an ad-supported version of its e-reader that's priced $25 lower than the version without the commercials. That means the Kindle, which was introduced in 2007 at a price of $399, is now only $114, and we can't imagine why Amazon doesn't just drop the price to $99 and make the device an impulse purchase. It continues to make strange decisions in the face of heavy new competition from tablets.
Speaking of which, a survey of 1,431 tablet owners by Google's Admob mobile ad network found that tablet-toters spend more time with their devices than with magazines, newspapers, radio, laptops or TV (although not combined). We're not sure if the total includes time spent cuddling the tablets while sleeping, but it was an excuse for Search Engine Watch to put together this nifty infographic (click to super-size).