Ex-HuffPo Recruiter: ‘The Number Of People Willing To Write For Free Is Vast’

Via Romenesko: Francis Wilkinson, writing in The Week, tackles the question of whether writing as a profession is becoming elitist. He used to recruit writers for Huffington Post, and found that it wasn’t that tough to get people to write for free:

I calculated that I would need 75 unpaid blog submissions per day, Monday through Friday, in order to make the site work. That target seemed absurd at first. Yet within two months, hundreds of willing bloggers had signed up, the majority of them credentialed authors published by major publishing houses.

As a guest editor for the New York Times‘ op-ed section, Wilkinson received more than 1,000 submissions a week—proving that “the Times‘ opinion pages really needn’t pay anything at all.” In any case, it appears to point to more writing opportunities for people who can afford not to get paid (very much).

It’s not obvious how young writers without accommodating, well-to-do parents or a trust from gramps make it these days. Surely they can’t spend a year or two blogging without pay until an audience evolves to nurture them. They’ll starve. Meantime, freelance rates for non-fluff magazine writing have barely risen in the past 15 years. And the chances of getting a job at a quality newspaper or a serious magazine are fast approaching zero.

There are various schools of thought about writing for free: supporters argue it makes good marketing sense, while opponents claim it devalues the entire profession. Does Huffington Post miss out on a diversity of viewpoints by limiting its writers to those who can afford to write for free?

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