via HuffPo
Washington City Paper reports a story which, put in basic historical economic terms, details how the feudal executive barons running their Washington Post fiefdom are having difficulties with the serfs on their newsroom staff.
It's a story which follows pretty much the outlines of the medieval economic conflicts between landed gentry and their peasant laborers, who got uppity and formed trade guilds to set standards for economic treatment.
In this case, the Post execs in the manor house don't want to pay for the added labors which they have demanded from their staff. Adopting the attitude identical to medieval lords, they effectively have declared that their workers have no ownership claim to their work product, that they are simply bound to their lieges, who have total discretion to generate added profit for the fiefdom without paying added compensation for the additional labor value. (Yet they do pay extra to certain court vassals; the more celebrated knights of the WaPo realm are selectively rewarded by their lord masters.)
In this case, the execs want their staffers to blog (of all things). In addition to their regular daily assignments. For no more dough. But the staff reporters have had the temerity to demand payment for the additional work. Imagine that. Maybe the staffers have read a little something about Adam Smith.
That being noted, irony abounds in this little tale. Bloggers, as a general rule being autonomous operators, don't enjoy compensation for their labors. Some blogs have become sources of revenue for their authors, but the compensation is not (again, generally speaking) in return for labor, it is for the service of advertising display. Or, in some cases, for fan merchandise.
Perhaps the WaPo staff can bargain an arrangement whereby they agree not to receive payment for their extra blog work, but instead they secure the totals of all corollary profits engendered by blogad revenues and t-shirt sales. I wonder if Marvin Miller is available to assist them in their negotiations with management?
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