Stooping to serfdom?

Journalists have never been known to be well paid. The purveyors of print journalism have never been compensated in any way commensurate with our significant role in our countries democracy - as defined in the First Amendment and as praised by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Benjamin Franklin.

Jokes of eating ramen noodles in college didn't end there for would-be newspaper reporters. In fact, I likely ate better as a struggling university student than I did as a fledgling reporter for the Huron Daily Tribune in Bad Axe, Mich. Where, upon arrival, I discovered I qualified for low-income housing thanks to my full-time salary that amounted to less than $15,000 a year. Try balancing a few bar nights (a necessity in the Thumb), eating, and paying back student loans with that income?

Well, we may be headed to a new low as an industry. A recent New York Times article (I read it on Ongo), had this headline: At Media Companies, a Nation of Serfs. Ouch!

The best example of this is the Huffington Post, which has employed a legion of unpaid bloggers - that's free content for the edgy, independent online newspaper that recently "sold out" for $315 million to AOL. Now, those unpaid bloggers are essentially working for the $2 billion media giant. Hmmmmm..... is working for free so sexy now?

It never was and it never will be. The biggest change to me is this: I was willing to work for much less than I should have made in an industry that I took pride in being a part of. Can we still sell that line of thinking to young journalists?