My problem with Patch: An open letter to Arianna Huffington and Tim Armstrong

Dear Arianna and Tim:

You need to pay me more.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be making money as a photographer for Patch.com, the series of AOL websites created in 2007 by AOL chairman Tim Armstrong and dedicated to local news. They are now under the tutelage of Arianna Huffington, whose powerhouse Huffington Post was recently bought by AOL. This is all exciting news for journalists. The newspaper industry is collapsing, and Huffington and Armstrong have fresh energy and excitement on their side. This is good, as the old guard is useless. We all know that Dana Milbank is really not necessary, and that Eugene Robinson does not have the ability to think original thoughts, write about diverse topics, and surprise. As David Carr once put it, the big rock is rolling down the hill. There’s nothing wrong with the slow-moving things getting crushed.

Still, I think that there is an equally valid fact that may have missed your attention: good journalism costs money. Tucker Carlson knew this when he started The Daily Caller and paid — even if it wasn’t much — journalists to find stories. They did just that, breaking stories about Michael Steele and the Republican stripper scandal and, just recently, a violent rapper who was invited to the White House. Money bought good stories, which then drove traffic to the site. They had — have — salaries.

Note: I’m not talking about bloggers; I agree with you that most of them aren’t worth much. I would be surprised if Andrew Sullivan spent more than two hours a day posting. And many of the professional pundits are worth even less. (Indeed, the question is how people like Dana Milbank and Richard Cohen have careers for doing a couple hours worth of work a week reciting liberal boilerplate. Then again, if the awful recent financial numbers about The Washington Post are to be believed, people have caught on.)

A few months ago, I was hired as a photographer for Patch.com. I take 40 pictures a week for four neighborhoods outside of Washington, D.C. Samples of my work can be found here and here. Most of the photographs have appeared on Patch.

I was raised in one of the neighborhoods I cover. This gives me added insight into the local scene. I should add that the Patch editors I work with are dedicated, patient, and terrific people. According to them, there has been very strong and positive feedback about my work.

They also are making roughly four times as much as I am. I’m getting paid $200 a week. That amounts to $10,400 a year. Most Patch editors are in the 35-40K range.

As a Catholic, I believe in the natural law — but also in social justice. St. Ambrose said that the conscience is “God’s herald and messenger.” Does your conscience tell you that you can pay a professional photographer $200 for four days of work? This is to say nothing of caption writing, which I also do for the job. Oftentimes this amounts to reporting on top of the picture-taking.

Would you pay a professional painter similar wages to paint your house?

I wanted to make my case in public because it is the kind of thing that makes so much sense that many editors, who tend to be busy and to not care too much about art (a fatal flaw in the Internet age), simply might not see it. The thing that I find so bizarre, Arianna and Tim, is that two people who are so savvy about journalism and the Internet seem to have missed the importance of photography to the web. A strong, beautiful image or video can drive traffic, increase hits.

NEXT: From flip-camera ghetto to sparkling journalistic juggernaut