Is Global Post Stiffing The Little Guys?

By Steve Hynd

Back in January, the news website Global Post launched to great fanfare. In fact, there had been a goodly deal of media hype about the new internet news platform throughout last year too. It looked almost too good to be true: a new multi-media website devoted exclusively to international news at a time when mainstream news organizations were downsizing their foreign news personnel drastically.

However, there were always worries about Global Post's business modeland whether it could generate enough revenue to sustain foreign reporting where mainstream organizations couldn't. Gawker predicted a "gaping black money hole " because "International news, see, is the only sort of content less attractive to advertisers than politics". Global Post's plan to charge $199 a year for Passport membership, which would include conference calls with journalists and the ability to "suggest article ideas" was also potentially problematic. Some were uncertain whether that was enough meat for the money to entice sufficient premium subscribers. However, syndication deals with the likes of Huffington Post, CBS Radio News, The Daily News and The Boise Weekly of Idaho lent more promise of a stable revenue stream.

But the business model was never going to work without enough readers of the website - and that's where bloggers like us come in. When Global Post launched, it contacted many political bloggers who dealt with foreign affairs offering a headline widget for their blogs in return for a small payment.

In some cases, the money came up front with an understanding of more to come on a monthly payment. For smaller blogs, like Newshoggers, the offer was to have the blog run the widget for a 30 day trial period, after which a small payment would be forthcoming monthly if there was enough incoming traffic to make it worth Global Post's while. We'd originally suggested they run their widget as an advert, and suggested a rate based on our BlogAds rate. Global Post's Beth Tucker responded that our rate sounded "very reasonable" but that they "like to test run the widget for a month" to see "what kind of response we might get from your community." All well and good and we went ahead on that basis. 

Newshoggers was, I believe, one of the first smaller bloggers contacted and certainly one of the first to host the Global Post sidebar widget. Our own Ron Beasley even helped them with formatting problems before they passed the widget on to other bloggers.

That was a couple of months ago. With the 30 day trial period over, we tried to contact Global Post to see what they wanted to do next - and kept the widget up in good faith while we did so. We've had absolutely no response. Since then, I've discovered that a Top 500 blogger, a friend with a blog getting in excess of 25,000 hits a day, had also made a deal with Global Post to host their widget and was having problems with it. "They paid up front for the first month, didn't cancel, and when I asked for payment after the second month was over said that they weren't getting enough clickthroughs and weren't paying." Other bloggers appear to be having similar problems.

Is this a sign that Global Post's business model is in trouble and they're cost cutting by stiffing the little guys, or perhaps a cynical calculation that bloggers individually don't have clout to be worth dealing fairly with? If Global Post would simply respond to our emails, we'd ask them on the record. In the meantime, though, their widget will disappear from this blog as from tomorrow.

Update 9 June: a Global Post spokesperson has responded:

The widget placements are not representative of how well GlobalPost's business model is doing. Rather, it was an experiment to try to connect with a very select group of blogs (of different sizes) that we thought had interesting things to say, were important, and would connect with a similar audience to ours (like newshoggers). This was a very targeted effort, and was not in any way a part of GlobalPost's business models. There was certainly no intention of stiffing anyone here. We feel that the mission of bringing international news to the forefront is very important, and our hope was that getting our headlines out on relevant sites would help in the overall effort to get the news out...There were no negative intentions here, and I feel that your post was really not based on the truth of the situation. GlobalPost is doing well, we are growing quickly, and are moving forward strongly in achieving our mission of bringing international news to the forefront.

And around 8.30 pm last night I received a phone call from Rick Byrne, Global Post's Director of Marketing. After a long call in which he again stressed that Global Post didn't intend stiffing anyone, that their business model is in no danger of failing and that the widget-placement marketing campaign was not essential to that model, we came to a resolution of the issue satisfactory to Newshoggers and, I trust, Global Post.

What appears to me to have gone wrong is that we bloggers mistakenly believed dealing with Global Post would be like dealing with BlogAds, who are scrupulous about renewals and payments, while Global Post mistakenly believed bloggers would have the billing and diary systems of large companies. However, it is certainly the case that the widget placement campaign was always designed to be a test and that the buys would be short term � in most cases a month; in some cases a quarter, according to Rick Byrne. He also confirmed that Global Post always intended that after that time period, the agreements ended.

So bloggers, if you've still got the Global Post widget up and you've gone past the agreed date, you're providing it for free and no-one to blame but yourself. Perhaps if Global Post decide to use this method of generating incoming traffic to their site on a more permanent basis they'll opt to use the BlogAds networks to ease administration at both ends, as I originally recommended to them.