Well, this is basically my fantasy: In the Columbia Journalism Review, Prospect senior correspondent Chris Mooney floats the idea of a union for bloggers, something akin to the Writer's Guild of America. Like screenwriters, Mooney writes, many bloggers are creating online content that generates a profit, but aren't sharing in that profit; he names popular diarists at DailyKos as an example. I see some problems here, of course: Sites that allow you to blog for free are offering a service that users enjoy and might otherwise have to pay for. No one is forcing amateur hobbyists to blog -- and if their blogs become popular enough, they can look for ways to monetize their traffic. Still, it's fun to think of a union for writers who blog as part of their day jobs, and thus don't have control over the revenue their traffic raises. Traditional newspaper journalists are often unionized, so when blogging gets added on to the many content-producing responsibilities they already have, those writers have an advocate in the workplace. Many web-only journalist/bloggers employed by newspapers, however, are prevented from joining the union, even at papers where a strong union exists. And consider the quality of life of the new breed of web-only writers, such as the small army of Nick Denton (Gawker Media) bloggers. They're paid by the traffic each post generates and thus, are under constant pressure to get links from the highest traffic sites. Just the idea terrifies me. --Dana Goldstein
