I talked to them a few years ago about doing one of these for my part of town. Quick answer: no, you don't get paid. Dunno how the paper's professional writers feel about it--OLive and the O are completely distinct entities. I didn't see it as exploitative--I'd gain an audience for my views, and they'd gain free service from a blogger. In the end I decided not to do it because I didn't want to confine all my blogging to a 5 sq mile radius. The people I talked to were pretty friendly and decent about it, though.

pay me, i'll report n mississippi and deep SE.

The other drawback is that all the layout and other functionality happens on the OLive end of things. You have to use their template, their method of getting comments, their method of directing email to you, etc. Given what I know about how smoothly OLive coordinates with the O, I could see only frustration with that kind of setup.

you're joking about reddit being exploitative, right? right?

My site is on the front page of the Oregonian's web site now - Recently commented: Art for meth: What an unholy bargain. As a test I logged on to Reddit with other user names and pushed the page up (with three votes, it's a pretty slack area). It's 10:52 and the site's had about 50 hits over average.

I don't have ads on the Portland Public Art site, and I'm not actually a real person, so there's no money moving toward me from the Oregonian.

But their blogs are uniformly stupid, arrogant and badly written. Why use their corporate portal? Why deal with the editorial restraint? No advantage beyond vanity, which is what 97% of blogging is about. And vanity is boring.

Remember just a few years back when Stickel and Rowe leased a huge voice mail system and had journos reading their junk, then you could call up the O, listen to an ad, and hear what Margie Boule thinks of a crippled child in Gresham. Fun!

i don't see how it's different from interning in general.

News flash: OregonLive and the Big O aren't the same entity. I know it's a big concept to grasp, so you may want to write it down. And then not use them interchangeably in subsequent blog posts.

Maybe not to people who work there, but in my eyes, they are. So fuck it.

By the way, C, "No advantage beyond vanity, which is what 97% of blogging is about. And vanity is boring."

Vanity is anything but boring. Anything but. I can assure you.

Oregonlive sucks, so I think that it's more fun to slowly watch them suffer just like a lot of printed newspapers these days. It just goes to show what happens to companies that you disagree with after the real people stop buying their poop.

Hell, I couldn't even deal with looking through their want ads, the site was so annoyingly put together, and that was when I needed the money.

Matt (@8), is there a British genome that prevents you from ever admitting you made a mistake?

todd -- guess what? no one gives a shit that Oregonlive and the O are o so different. They both suck terribly and the 'live version couldn't exist without the fishwrap. From the public POV, they're both equally responsible for the abominable writing/reporting/"design"/etc.

"Skeezy?" Is that UK term? Is it like sleezy or sketchy?

Interesting, I had a conversation with someone I will call Matt, not too long ago, about blogs on oregonlive. I guess my southern accent got in the way.

Neighborhood blogs - their version - has been around for a while. I started my blog Old Town 2/05.

Their goal when I started was plain and simple - neighborhood blogs.

My purpose was (and is) to draw attention to Old Town issues. There are no animals or photos of kids or vacations.

Oregonlive is nothing more than a hosting site.

I don't get paid. I hear nothing from them and ask nothing in return.

Their contract unless changed does nothing more than prevent using the posts elsewhere.

First off, I'm an ex-OregonLive employee. Secondly, you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.

Reddit allows blogs and other websites to get far more traffic than they would otherwise thanks to being on the homepage of the most viewed site in Oregon. That's exploitive how? Same goes for recruiting neighborhood bloggers, something OregonLive was doing long before The Portland Mercury was around. Very few people make money by blogging. Most everyone who does blog does so because they've got something to say. So wouldn't having you blog on a site with a large amount of traffic be a good thing?

It's also hardly a small detail that OregonLive and the Oregonian are separate, especially considering that you're asking "how do the O's professional writers feel about this?" Bottom line is it doesn't matter, as the two are separate entities. Just because you're ignorant of the arrangement doesn't make it unimportant. That's like saying the Senate and the House of Reps are the same thing because they're both parts of government. Besides, isn't getting facts straight, even in a blog post, something a journalist should value?

Say what you want about the design of the site, but don't blame the Oregonian for it. They literally have no say. I mean, it's not nearly as cool looking as a three color scheme blogspot account, but what is?

Finally, it's easy to throw stones at the the bigger, more successful and more frequented site (by a long shot), but you overlook that the people who work there are awesome and present a ton of content with a very small staff. It's by no means perfect, but it gets the job done.

C of #13 and Me C of #5 are not the same non-person.

Get your own letter.

Thanks for clearing that up.

LOL. Matt Davis (Karma: 42 points on Oregon Reddit) says Reddit exploits. Why have you posted 18 times on Oregon Reddit? and only to your blog? Exploitive or self-serving?

My congrats to Larry's Old Town blog on oregonlive: 3 year anniversary