EARL GIBSON III
A blogger who used to write for the Huffington Post filed a $315 million lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of all the writers who he says were not paid fairly for their work. Jonathan Tasini, a social activist, is seeking class-action status alleging that none of the $315 million AOL paid to purchase the Huffington Post has gone to the writers and producers of the news and opinion site. Tasini said he contributed 216 “pieces of content” between December 2005 and February 2011 and was never paid for any of his work—and he claims that there are as many as 9,000 other “content providers” who have worked for free. In a statement on his website, Tasini called Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington a “robber baron CEO … who believes that they, and only they, should pocket huge riches while the rest of the peons struggle to survive.”