After 216 Unpaid Posts, Huffington Post Contributor Files Lawsuit

Author and freelance journalist Jonathan Tasini (pictured) has a way with words. Take, for example, the titles of his four books:

- It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On;
- The Audacity of Greed;
- The Edifice Complex;
- They Get Cake, We Eat Crumbs.

Any one of those could apply to the $105 million class action lawsuit filed today by Tasini against The Huffington Post, AOL, Arianna Huffington, and Jonathan Lerer on behalf of the thousands of unpaid bloggers who helped create some of HuffPo’s vaunted acquisition value. But Tasini instead draws a different, equally provocative comparison in his accompanying press release:

“Arianna Huffington is pursuing the Wal-Martization of creative content… Actually, that is unfair to Wal-Mart because at least Wal-Mart pays its workers something for the value those workers create.”

As a paid journalist covering labor and economics, Tasini has contributed to the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and others. He also previously instigated a lawsuit against the New York Times that led to a winning digital verdict in June 2001.