Comment 41451

By iforget (anonymous) | Posted June 02, 2010 at 07:14:12

I'm confused about how you see this working positively for the workers who produce literature, journalism etc. It seems to leave us in a bit of a bind; as it is, we do lots of work for free or for less than livable pay, just to establish the portfolio we need to secure higher-profile underpaid work and the occasional gig that pays well, so how are we helped by a business model that pushes us farther from stable, sustainable employment and deeper into an employment culture of cutthroat competition, free "blogger" work, random paycheques and self-branding? I'm not saying I'm a fan of media as it exists, but this amateur-and-entrepreneur market is really hard to work in, if you also like to do things like eat, get your prescriptions filled, sleep indoors, and pay off the student loans you took out to become a highly skilled professional. What kind of support do you envision that would make this business model livable for the people who produce content in it? Where would professional ethics fit in to this model, in an industry that pressures writers to produce "competitive" content at all costs? How would ideas that diverge radically from dominant culture be integrated into a google-style search? How would young workers get started in this model? How would we collect payment for our work? Would experimental writers be able to earn an income?

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