Oh. it hadn't occured to me that there was a misunderstanding. I thought that both of them think that it's perfectly reasonable to pay for the privilege of working. After all, that was the essence behind doug's pointed preface to the link.
Dorene: the money _must_ go to some benefit for Robert F. Kennedy. The name of the donor is Huffpo, not the individual doing the donating.
Reminds me of the circle jerk called United Way. Your company forces you to sit thru 4 hours of crap and then pressures you into donating money so the corporation can look like a big shot to the rest of the high society big shot donors in the city.
Doug's preface to this was about the ethos of the new media which is:
1. make users create your content, so you don't have to hire labor to do it. in a broader context, this is called rationalization. fast food joints and other similar outfits started it by making consumers to the work: pour your own soda, make your own coffee, pump your own gas.
2. get people to create content without pay, using their content as a way to get in the media, and use this exposure to get "real" jobs.
3. now, Huffpo takes it to a new level: you pay them to produce their product so the owners can collect the profits.
4. The difference between Cornell, Yale, Harvard, Princeton and other joints where I'd pay about 25k for tuition (the rest, room and board) is that I'd actually walk out of the joint with a very good job, with the cream of the crop available to me. This past summer, when I was interviewing with Wall St. outfits, it was only by virtue of a degree from a private university that they looked at my resume at all. The recruiters sometimes accidentally sent me the requirements they'd received from the client. It sometimes specified exactly what university the candidate was from.
An internship at Huffpo would guarantee me shit. But maybe some people want to pay 15k for a turd.