Blogging is becoming a profession. Dooce has been making a “comfortable enough middle class to upper-middle class income” since she put graphical ads on her blog in 2005 (Salt Lake Tribune, October 14, 2006 – sorry, you have to pay $2.90 to read the article). Over at ProBlogger, hundreds of full-time and would-be full-time bloggers discuss strategies. Now, some of these bloggers want to start a union. And there are already existing unions who want to recruit them:

“Bloggers are on our radar screen right now for approaching and recruiting into the union,” said Gerry Colby, president of the National Writers Union (Washington Post)

I think one of the main points of unions for freelance workers in the US is the ability to negotiate cheaper health insurance. I’m not sure what else they’d be doing.

2 thoughts on “do bloggers need a union?

  1. marta klimowicz


    ;).

  2. Michael Clarke

    I’m not entirely sure who’s more desperate – the NWU chasing after bloggers’ subscriptions (haven’t they noticed how averse bloggers and Web 2.0-types as a species are to actually paying for something?) or bloggers after the validation of belonging to a union. Good point about the health insurance, though – that’s not a small issue in terms of the US.

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]