A Blogger’s Union? They’ve Got To Be Kidding
Stop the madness.
Apparently, a group of leftist bloggers are trying to form a union of bloggers. They think it will help them to get health care benefits; they also plan on collective bargaining and professional standards.
I’m having a really hard time wrapping my brain around this one. Collective bargaining with whom? I have a golf blog because I love to write, and I love golf. I work for no one, so there’s no one to negotiate with. (OK, so there’s Mrs. Golfblogger. But that’s not a negotiation. I just do what she tells me). I have ads, but if I don’t like Google’s terms, I’ll just go to a different ad agency. There are dozens of them out there.
Professional standards? Please. Some of these people are the ones who write on a regular basis about how Bush blew up the towers. And I regularly visit the grassy knoll with the latest PGA Tour conspiracy theory.
There’s some sense in the health care benefits thing. I suppose that if enough of them got together in a pool, Blue Cross would give them a better rate. But there are already any number of small business pools they could join. If their blogs are making money, they surely count as small businesses. GolfBlogger, for example is incorporated as an Limited Liability Corporation (but that’s more about liability issues than any potential profits).
And if they did manage to pull such a thing off, I wonder if the internet would suddenly become a closed shop. Would I have to join to blog? Would I suddenly have someone to answer to? And could I belong to more than one union at once. I’m already a member of the teacher’s union (we have a closed shop ... all teachers MUST be members.)
The whole idea is just nutty. The internet is decentralized and anarchic. Once people start imposing a structure on it, it’ll lose what makes it such a great thing in the first place.
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Comments
Who are they going to be collectively bargaining with?
Posted by martin on 08/07
Martin—that’s one of my big questions. It sort of implies that they’re all working for someone.
The Conservative conspiracy theorists have been saying for years that all of these left-wing blogs are just sock puppets, working for the Democratic Party. If they want to band together and demand collective bargaining with someone, maybe the conservative conspiratorialists are right.
Nah. The people who cooked up this Union idea are just nuts.
Posted by The Golf Blogger on 08/07
What a steamy pile that would be!
Here’s the thing about the internet. You’re free to do and say what you like. Listen to whom you choose and comment as you choose.
My experience with unions has been just the opposite. Conform to a single idea. Everybody and everything is dumbed down to slowest turtle in the pack mentality.
Not what I consider the American way.
Posted by noisemaker on 08/07
A lot of real news organizations are now seeking out some of these bloggers for comments on their news stories. They are seen as authorities now instead of just people with opinions. So, I can see how some would want to turn it into a real job with benefits because they are treating it that way and some media outlets are using them in that manner. I guess union dues would pay for all the insurance and things that the bloggers want, unless they plan to make websurfers subscribe to their blogs and pay a fee. And I can see why they would want a code of professional ethics since they would want to protect the integrity of their type of blogging service.
I doubt we would all be forced to join a union. I think they could come up with a button to put on the blog that would identify the blog as a ‘news’ blog that conforms to the union rules so surfers would know what kind of blog they are reading.
There’ve been discussions about blogger ethics ever since that one woman, I think in the U.K., was stalked by a reader.
Posted by Miranda on 08/07
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