Do Bloggers Need To Unionize?

There have always been pro-union people and anti-union people, and you can usually guess who's what depending on their individual caste. In this case, though it carries with it the same arguments, it will have to be decided first if an industry has emerged from nebulous existence and into a viable, thriving industry.

Do Bloggers Need To Unionize?
Labor unions are for steel workers and teachers, underpaid, over-skilled and overworked, who need collective bargaining power just to avoid a return to the 19th Century sweat-shop economy – that, and the ability to feed their kids.

(Note: I chose steel workers and teachers as examples only because the two make up about two-thirds of my own family. So that means, in general, I am pro-union, and by default, pro-American-made automobile.)

In the past two years, blogging, as a profession, has grown from geeky obscurity into a direct challenge to the journalism industry, even with bloggers' reputation for being unruly, unvetted, grammatically and syntactically insufficient, and above all, a disorganized mess. 

But that is sort of what (okay, completely what) made the medium so appealing. They answered to no one and therefore were accountable to no one; the individualist, populist, no-truth-barred approach both what propelled it and what held it back. Abused, sometimes inaccurate, sometimes out and out wrong, but for the most part, a development for the greater good, for freedom of speech, for information exchange, for the free market of ideas.

But organized? Isn't that a kind of bloggers' code sacrilege? Wouldn't this be the same disorganized collective that railed against the idea of a
I'm not taking sides here, just stating the crux of the matter. The issue was billed as a "liberal" movement, as you might imagine, as no business-minded, robber-baron conservative type would support unionization. I might have taken a side there, though. Again, I am generally pro-union, as it seems to me it's either that or indentured servitude and tenant farming.

It's billed as a liberal cause because it was "left-leaning bloggers" that brought it up, according to the
That's the cynic's viewpoint, and a witty one. But there are pro bloggers out there the world (and publishers) would miss.

Marketing Pilgrim's

Not only do I think that a free-market would support such an endeavor, but Google itself has now put in place the infrastructure to encourage the economics of quality. As a friend of mine put it, they've turned the "authority" and "quality" buttons way, way, way up on their search algorithms.

My opinion? Thanks for asking. I think it will happen and some won't like it. I think it will be necessary in some instances and some won't like it. I think not everybody will be admitted and many won't like that, either.