On Tuesday, former Huffington Post blogger Jonathon Tasini filed a $105 million class-action suit against AOL and the Huffington Post, claiming that the publication owes money to him and others who blogged for the site for free. Now editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington has taken to the Huff Post site to respond to the allegations, which she says have no merit.
"No contract was broken," she said in a blog post. "Our bloggers can post as frequently or infrequently as they like—and write about whatever they like, whenever they like, or not at all."
The suit seeks $105 million in damages for more than 9,000 unpaid HuffPost bloggers. It's a third of the price AOL reportedly paid to acquire the site, based on Tasini's argument that content created by pro-bono bloggers makes up a third of the the Huffington Post's value.
"If not for the labor of Plaintiff and the thousands of unpaid Class members on and for TheHuffingtonPost.com, each of who helped make TheHuffingtonPost.com a household name, TheHuffingtonPost.com would not have been an attractive merger target and would have sold for at least $105 million less than the merger price of $315 million," the suit says. It can be read in full on huffingtonpostlawsuit.com.
Tasini took the claim further when he told reporters Tuesday that the Huffington Post bloggers were "essentially turned into modern-day slaves," a claim that Huffington says is "unoriginal" and "deeply offensive."
In Huffington's response, she contends that the vast majority of the site's unpaid bloggers are happy to have the opportunity and exposure that comes from writing for the Huffington Post. The same applied to Tasini until AOL acquired the site, she said.
"It seems that AOL's purchase of Huffington Post suddenly opened his eyes to the fact that we are a business," Huffington continued. "I guess he'd missed the ads that appeared on the same page as his blog posts the 216 times he decided, of his own free will, to post something on our site."
The Huffington Post has issued the following statement: "The lawsuit is wholly without merit. As we've said before, our bloggers use our platform—as well as other unpaid group blogs across the Web—to connect and help their work be seen by as many people as possible. It's the same reason people go on TV shows: to promote their views and ideas. HuffPost bloggers can cross-post their work on other sites, including their own. Aside from our group blog, to which thousands of people from around the world contribute, we operate a journalistic enterprise with hundreds of paid staff editors, writers, and reporters."