Bloggers now are everywhere among us, and no one asks if we don’t need more full-throated advocacy on the Internet. The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined.
And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side. “No man but a blockhead,” the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said, “ever wrote but for money.” Yet here are people, whole brigades of them, happy to write for free. And not just write. Many of the most active bloggers — Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah Marshall and the contributors to the Huffington Post — are insistent partisans in political debate.
'ol Josh Marshall took care of the sloppy reporting (pointing out that the first three on his list are professionals), so I'll just give a "Pygalgia is a blockhead" response. Yeah, I write for free. Because there are things I want to say. Which is why I started blogging (well, that and the incredible sex with the blog groupies). My "manifestos" and "unbecoming hatred" are available to anyone who wants to read them for free.
Having said that, I'd be perfectly happy to get paid for blogging. Drop me an email, and I'll let you know where to send the checks.
2 comments:
I don't think that Thomas Jefferson turned down the assignment to write the Declaration of Independence because he wouldn't get paid for it. Think of the royalties he missed out on. Jefferson died a poor man. What a blockhead indeed!
In fact, many of our forefathers weakened their own economic standing by agitating.
Pretty good company.
Perhaps professionals need to rethink their competition. We aren't the competition, they are their own.
The worse they get, the more cravenly pursuing fame, th more coupled with the power structure the appear, the less likely that average Americans are going to truth them to deliver "news."
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