Controversy Over HuffPo's No-Pay Policy

More on the topic of whether the Huffington Post should start paying its bloggers once it's in the black:

Blake Fleetwood, who writes about politics for the mega-blog, defends its business model:

With over 1800 posters, and a lean paid staff, Huffington Post has gathered together the largest and brightest assortment of journalists, writers, and policy makers ever-assembled, contributing to one newspaper, magazine, or blog.

HuffPo, using the wisdom of large and literate crowd, really broadens the opinion spectrum on any given event and produces a critical mass of ideas that makes HuffPo so enlightening.

Uh..."broadens the opinion spectrum"? From what I've seen, the spectrum of HuffPo opinionators runs from liberals who actually know what they're talking about to liberals who are just repeating whatever they heard around the hacky-sack circle.

Fleetwood continues:

The secret, and brilliant, ingredient of HuffPo is that contributors can post without any editorial gate keeping -- as to space and style. This freedom to write whatever you want, as long as you want, is what encourages all the well written -- unpaid -- submissions from so many articulate contributors.

I'm not even going to point out that "editorial gate keeping" is usually a good thing. Fleetwood's right: Every so often, a story that deserves to get written doesn't because of an over-cautious editor.

But it's just not true that there is no gate-keeping. HuffPo editors read and approve every post, and reject anything that they regard as beyond the pale. In practice, that means incitement to violence or hate speech -- but I imagine conservative writers and HuffPo editors might disagree about where to draw that line.

Finally, Fleetwood writes:

Not many of us are ever going to get the space in the New York Times that Maureen Dowd or Tom Friedman own, but the Huffington Post gives a voice and platform to hundreds of intelligent writers who would otherwise be mute.

Why on earth would these writers be mute? If they're so intelligent, surely they could figure out how to start their own blogs. It takes about five minutes, thanks to Google Blogger.

The real test of Arianna Huffington's commitment to digital democracy and online community and all that jazz is what happens when some no-name HuffPo blogger breaks out, acquires a following, and decides he wants to migrate his blog elsewhere on the web so he can own his own traffic and brand. Will she wish him a gracious fare-thee-well when he goes from serf to neighboring landholder?