Progessivism Has Its Price

The Huffington Post was created six years ago as an Internet platform for spreading progressive ideas, which finally made way for the victory of Barack Obama. Thousands of bloggers — up to 6,000 — post their articles on that page at no cost, in what until now was a system that benefited both sides. It provided Huffington with content and the bloggers with relevance and a loudspeaker to express their opinions. Until AOL came.

The deal, reached last February, just closed. AOL, the veteran Internet firm, bought Huffington for 230 million euros. The romantic journalistic adventure has been a juicy business whose profits have gone to a few hands, especially to those of its founder, Arianna Huffington. One of those bloggers, Jonathan Tasini, writer and former Democratic candidate for senator, is now demanding his share. Tuesday he filed a lawsuit demanding a third of the sale price, or 72 million euros, for him and the rest of his colleagues

Arianna Huffington is irritated. One only has to read her commentary published on her online newspaper to see this. In addition to heaping insults on Tasini, she explains the small chance of the blogger winning the lawsuit. And perhaps she is right. It does not seem logical to now demand part of the business deal after freely accepting the gratitude of their collaborations. But perhaps the director has reasons to worry since, regardless of whether the plaintiff wins or loses, his case uncovers the weaknesses of this new journalism, which has brought notoriety to Huffington.

The publication’s bloggers do not know the amount of traffic it generates and, therefore, do not know the amount of profit they make. So says Tasini. The concise writings of this medium (only 80 journalists) confirm that it’s more of a content aggregator than generator, which does not match the influence it exercises. The blogs are, according to the founder, its DNA. But it does not pay royalties. One wonders whether the giant has feet of clay and whether in its sale it has or hasn’t cheated both parties.