Kay B. Day

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:36:40 -0800

I love the attitude. Those of us who work at writing for income--and many of us have done this a long time--are naturally shocked at the attitude of a site with resources that asks a writer to work free. I don't hold citizen journalism accountable--that's a blessing of the Web. And I do think overall it is a blessing. But if a revenue-producing site attempts to obtain free, expert content, well, that's a little like an oil refinery wanting free crude. Some people write for income. They're just like teachers, doctors or hamburger flippers except they are in control of their own hours, resources and direction. I didn't read the whole piece, so I'm simply addressing Dawdy's quotes in the article excerpt. But writers don't work for free, not if it's work. We will work for free out of passion for a topic, but hey, we can do a blog for free at that much-maligned Google. Post when we want to. And they have the most user-friendly reliable system around. IMO. best to all, Kay Day Jacksonville, Fla.

Mark

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:23:40 -0800

"...and who holds Google accountable for stealing content and profiting from its sale." It's that attitude, in a nutshell, that's making old-school journalists look so asinine and antiquated these days. Google doesn't "steal" content, it indexes content. Readers find newspaper content through Google News, but to read the story they have to navigate to the newspaper site. Newspapers -- and reporters -- want that to happen. They want people to find and read their stories. Blaming Google for doing exactly what they want Google to do -- and implying that somehow Google is wrong for attempting to turn a profit in doing so -- is like accusing the city of stealing a portion of your restaurant's profits because it built a road that your customers drove on when getting there. But no, I'm sure he's right. Google is bad. Much better if no one could ever find his blog because no search engine indexed it. Better still for him to write his blog on scraps of paper while hiding in the closet -- otherwise how will he know that no one will peer through his living room window and profit by his work without his authorization? Even better still is not to write at all, for fear that somehow someone will use that in a way he doesn't want them to. And from the sounds of it, that's just where he's headed: to not writing at all.

Seattlest: Never Hurts to Ask

Kay B. Day

Mark