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A labor union for bloggers? No, no thank you. Unions are for real, actual work, not freaking blogging. Jesus, don’t inflate yourselves so much.
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Oliver Willis
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I think it would be useful … if only for getting a health insurance pool. Obviously there’s not a need for a lot of other stuff.
Also Susie is a rare bird that’s becoming rarer; someone who blogs daily but doesn’t have a day job. even Duncan Black now gets paid by Media Matters; most other blogs have some institution that pays them. Susie doesn’t just want benefits like health insurance; she needs them.
Get Universal Health Care passed and that issue becomes a moot point.
“Blogging” doesn’t mean the same thing to everybody. For some people it’s just fucking around on a web site, sure, while they get paychecks someplace else.
For others, it’s a way to do real journalism, and I can’t see anybody arguing against writers or journalists forming unions, not with the shitty state of corporate news and artistic ownership these days.
Who’s to decide whose work is “real” and whose isn’t? I love your work, Oliver, but wow, do I ever disgree with you there.
A.
If someone is doing real journalism on their blog, isnt there already a journalists union they can join? A union for bloggers is like a union for computerists, that is, a union for anyone who uses a computer. A blog is a tool.
There are writers’ unions that bloggers could join, sure. An existing organization might serve the need, though I don’t know enough about any of them to say for certain.
That’s a different argument, though, than the one your post is making, which is that blogging isn’t “real work” and thus does not qualify one for union membership.
A.
Journalism is real work. Blogging isn’t.
OW, you missed the panel on the evolution of blogs. Maybe for you, it is not real work to be a blogger (since you have a good employer), but for folks like Stoller or Bowers, Taylor Marsh, and Digby, I think they may believe differently.
Sounds to me like they are looking to form a guild, not a union.
I don’t think I need to see a panel on evolution of blogs, I’ve lived the evolution of blogs.
While I’m hardly a blogger, let alone one who makes a living at it, I can see some sort of AARP type group that can get discounts on things such as computers, office supplies, travel and so forth. The only problem I see is where you draw the line on membership. Just how large or active a long-lived a blog has to be in order to qualify?
Marc Andreessen writes:
Next up: cheap, high-quality, fuel-efficient Japanese blogs take over the market.
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/next-up-cheap-h.html