Is The Guardian Doing The Right Thing?

What are the effects of “offering” free employment?

On Wednesday, one of Britain’s longest running and highly respect newspapers, The Guardian, announced a new, bold idea for its sport section of its website, . The concept, the Guardian Sports Network, would basically establish a sort of partnership between Guardian Sport and a selected number of sport blogs (most of which are centered on soccer/football). The Guardian, with given permission, will cross-post selected articles or works of writing on the Guardian website, without any type of paid compensation or contract, and link back to the original article, under the presumption that this will drive up traffic for the blog and raise its ad revenues (if it even has that). The idea, which is already in effect, has been called an “open model” for journalism.

On the comments section of the website, there were a few dissenting voices (more on their reasons later), but on general the consensus was that the idea was novel, promising, and one that opened up a few more doors for aspiring bloggers. On Twitter, however, a storm was raised. Being the quick, easily-connecting medium that it is, Twitter allowed for much more dissenters to voice their opinions. Leading the pack against the GSN, was Surreal Football’s Twitter. Surreal Football (a very funny, if unconventional football website in its own right, and one you should definitely check out), argued that the GSN promotes free labor, and free labor is universally wrong. Surreal, among the obscenities, raised some very good points, which I’ll expand on later. Although Surreal was attacked and lambasted by some for trying to be “cool” (the website does have a reputation for running against the flow with some, well, surreal pieces), and for being backwards and not trying to progress. Needless to say, the discourse was toxic at times, and both sides slung mud at each other.

For objectivity’s sake, we’ll explore both sides talking points- is the GSN good, or is it a threat to aspiring bloggers and established writers and freelancers?

Pros
- A blog posted on the GSN would receive much more exposure than it would have received otherwise with no outside promotion. This increases the chances that the blog in question will receive much more visits and attention than usual. If the blog sells ad space, it may see an increase in revenue.
- The GSN is bridging the old media and the new media, bringing innovation and creativity to a creaking, dying medium. This will only bring good things to both sides of the spectrum.
- A blogger who has serious aspirations of writing for a living can put his/her time at the GSN under his resume, becoming more attractive to potential employers.
- A blogger who has work posted on the GSN will increase his/her name recognition and, in theory, increases his/her chances of getting employed at a big site or publication. In short, working with the GSN could be the blogger’s “way in” of hitting the big time.

Cons
- “Exposure” doesn’t pay your bills, buy food, or fund your vices.
- Putting free labor on your resume, even if it is in the form of working at the GSN, is downright dangerous to your future employment. Why would an employer, knowing you have agreed to work for free, offer you a wage, salary, or contract? In today’s cash- and job- strapped Western world, most people looking for a job have very few options. Employers know this and could use that to their advantage.
- The lack of payment for the blogger’s services have caused some respected bloggers, including the Swiss Ramble, to reject the Guardian’s invitation to join the GSN. This shows that perhaps the idea is not universally agreed upon and the blogging community could be receptive to ask for some changes to the model.
- Working for free makes you a very attractive worker, from the business’ perspective. Having one person work for free makes it likely that the employer will only start looking for others that are also willing to work for free. This harms other workers that want to work for money and starts a race to the bottom, in which bloggers and other aspiring writers have less and less real opportunities to make some money from the profession, and restricting the chances to those that can afford to work for free- in other words, widening the gap between the have and the have nots.
- Finally, having bloggers who are willing to work for free could make it possible, in the future, for the Guardian to cut some of the paid writing staff. This is admittedly a bit of a far-fetched idea, and one that the Guardian has steadfastly rejected, but the question remains: why hire free labor?

To help explain this better, let’s use an old friend, football. Suppose you are Johnny Englishman, an amateur footballer who could have what it takes to be a pro, and make some big bucks while at it. Johnny currently plays for his small club, but is approached by a big club, let’s say Spurs, for a trial. Johnny agrees, and joins Spurs, without a contract and without getting paid. In training, Harry notices that Johnny has some real skills, and decides to play Johnny on Saturday, when Spurs host Mid-Table Club at the Lane. Johnny, who is only a trialist, starts and has a good hand in Spurs’ win. Johnny, by appearing, has thus given his labor in return for nothing. Spurs took advantage of his work to get a result in their favor and the positive consequences that come out of it.

Of course, in real life, such a scenario would never happen. Johnny would contact the FA, who would slap Spurs with a fine, or worse, harsher punishment in the form of deductions or bannings and force Spurs to either give Johnny a paid contract if they wish to play him in competitive games, or have him on trial but not feature him at all. This is because as a high profile set of laborers, soccer/football athletes- all professional sport athletes, really- are well-protected figures who have clearly set rights and have the luxury of exercising them at nearly every opportunity- player power, Bosman ruling, and so on.

However, bloggers are a much lower-profile set of workers and thus are much less protected than athletes. Now, I am mainly talking about those bloggers out there who have a real desire to write about their subject for a living. And in that regard, it’s often times a cut-throat world out there. Getting a nice job or position often times depends on who you know, your disposable income, or sheer luck. The GSN, at face value, seems to erase or mitigate those obstacles that modern-day bloggers face to hit the prime time and achieve their goals.

In the end, at the root of the matter, lies a very important question: why not pay at all? Yeah, the GSN looks promising, but a lot of the counter-arguments to its inception raise an overreaching point: is free labor ok? Yes, the work has originally been written for the original blog, but the Guardian is cross-posting it, and raising money out of it. Even a measly sum or contract would be better than nothing at all. The Guardian, and the people who write for the blogs that have accepted the offer to submit content to the GSN, could potentially establish a very dangerous precedent: that of replacing freelancers with free labor. Why pay for the work of a couple of freelancers when you have a steady supply of blogs giving you content for free? You could argue that the freelancers have more time, energy, knowledge, and craft to produce a higher quality product, but when you get to the point where you have a multi-national, multi-million dollar business at hand (The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group), quality is often times the very last priority. Sure, you have to have some kind of quality control, or else every single article would consist of a picture of a monkey eating poo and eulogies about Titus Bramble. But when it comes to the more specific type of quality, the type of quality that differentiates between a good product and a great one, it’s more than likely that the big business at hand will go toward the product based on its costs, not their quality. This is why In-N-Out, a smaller, locally based fast food chain based mostly in the U.S. West Coast, has products that objectively taste better and are of higher quality than those of McDonald’s, a global, multi-billion dollar corporation. McDonald’s knows that its product are of a lower quality than those of the local and smaller chains, but it doesn’t care. The make up for the quality by the sheer numbers that they sell and make. A business will look to drive down the costs, including that of human capital, before increasing the quality of their product just a little bit. It’s basically how the large scale business world operates.

How does this relate back to the Guardian? Simply put, this could be a very promising attempt to bridge the widening gap between the new media and the old media, and help promote some small guys in the process. From a different perspective, it is ridiculous that the Guardian not pay people for work that they themselves will make money of. By not paying anything at all to these bloggers and championing the idea as an “open model” for journalism, they are setting up further obstacles for bloggers that don’t have any connections or advantages beforehand. Yes, the Guardian may be reportedly losing money, but I’m sure they pay their established writing staff some handsome numbers. Surely they can afford a few crumbs to throw to these aspiring writers, right? The Guardian is the most prominent center-left newspaper in Britain. How ironic that they would be the one to serve their own version of an unpaid internship, and have people defend their subjugation into a pretty wonky employer-employee model.

Innovation, or oppression? It’s probably in the middle. Have at it in the comments. Have a good Saturday!

Some Related Stories:

Category: Randoms, Rants