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.

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