Journalist Caused the Demise of the Content Farm Writer

Writing online today is not as rosy as in the old days, thanks to journalist who didn't like the change the Internet brought about. In days gone by writers were paid for their work, but then some old school journalist decided that if they didn't want to write a particular kind of content, then no one should, so they started calling some sites "content farms" and bashing those who wrote for them. In some cases their criticism was justified, but not for the most part. OK, even I admit "How to place a body in a casket" is beyond a stupid title to write about, but even more creepy was that someone had searched for it. You see, the whole basis of a GOOD content farm is to give the people what they want. So, they found out what people were searching for and handed out assignments to willing writers, paying them $15. Well, again, the "real" journalist got upset because the other farmers were getting paid for that. They thought a writer should be paid hundreds of dollars for that article which was a quick read. So they made enough of a stir that Google pretty much slammed content farms, and almost made them go away. So now you only see a piece by some card carrying member of the press corps, or rather, you can see the syndicated column of one person on a ton of sites. It should be noticed that the main plagiarizers online have been by traditional journalist, since content farms required all content to go through a Copyscape type program. Demand Studios threw their loyal writers under the bus and other sites have either shut down or now require "unique" (not available anywhere else) content to be posted for FREE or for the promise of "exposure." So, card carrying journalist won sort of, but in a way they didn't since you have sites like HuffingtonPost and Forbes.com with free writers and requiring those writers to bring in readers. Oddly enough, journalist also had issues with bloggers too, but bloggers (the good ones) have been able to live past the changes and have audiences that can rival some of the best news sites, ie, Mashable.