The Huffington Post succeeded by recruiting unpaid contributors and cutting costs.

Evidence

Peretti, Lerer, and Huffington were each masters of attention capture, and their collaboration proved more than the sum of its parts. … Soon the Huffington Post was inviting not just celebrities to contribute but students, politicos, activists, book authors—just about anyone except the professional reporter or normal freelancer who expected to be paid. It was a degree of openness more akin to the early days of the web and blogosphere than any older model of media. Minimal costs, maximum traffic, and irresistible content above all—that was the formula. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 954

Categorization

• XREF: The unpaid-contributor model foreshadows the gig/substack economics later examined in attention-economy literature. — connects to: Paid professional staff displaced amateur bloggers in the attention economy — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 969

Broader Connections

• Paid professional staff displaced amateur bloggers in the attention economy #expands (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 969