It may be a new year, but we’re still talking (well, some of us are anyway) about an old issue: namely, the idea of paying writers based on the traffic they get.
The focus of the debate right now is Gawker, where Nick Denton has apparently a post about it at the time). And there have been other occasions as well, including when Business 2.0 magazine — which was then being run by Owen Thomas, now better known as the senior editor of Valleywag — started compensating writers based on their blog traffic.
In his memo, Nick says something that is very true about the difference between blogs and traditional media. While digital media gives editors or publishers the ability to track and compensate based on traffic:
“At newspapers, a reporter’s reputation depends on the opinion of their editors, which can be fickle. Some people get on because they play the office politics well. Or simply because they’re more aggressive in lobbying for more prominent jobs, or pay increases.”
The key question, of course, is whether rewarding bloggers for traffic is a good thing or a bad thing. One argument is that “incentivizing” bloggers to boost their traffic encourages them to make their posts not such a bad idea
The bottom line is that — as Scott Karp notes at Publishing 2.0 — rewarding writers based on traffic is Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!