Most of the writing I have done in my life has been for money (as Dr. Johnson said, "no man but a blockhead ..."). But the idea of writing for other reasons is not entirely alien to me. I write my WFTC column because I have wanted to explore Montaigne's method of introspection. My choice. What disturbs about the Huffington Post is that Ariana Huffington is about to cash a very large check -- worth some $18 million -- because HuffPo aggregated and published lots of other people's work for free. If those who contributed of their own free will are OK with that, well, who am I to complain? And I suppose the people who wrote the stuff HuffPo "condensed" got paid by whoever they wrote for in the first place. But there remains something about all this that gives off a bad odor. I wonder how much those who do the condensing get paid. And I wonder if they will get anything out of the sale.
My own take on Ariana Huffington is that she is herself her ideology.
Content farming is lucrative.
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