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HuffPo UK editor Stephen Hull squirms as he defends slave labour in an interview with Steve Hewlett:

“I love this question, because I’m proud to say that what we do is that we have 13,000 contributors in the UK, bloggers… we don’t pay them, but you know if I was paying someone to write something because I wanted it to get advertising pay, that’s not a real authentic way of presenting copy. So when somebody writes something for us, we know it’s real. We know they want to write it. It’s not been forced or paid for. I think that’s something to be proud of.”

Any writers whose hard, unpaid work has helped boost HuffPo’s traffic are welcome to get in touch…

UPDATE: A freelance journalist gets in touch, telling Guido they recently went to HuffPo offering them a small scoop. This was the reply they received:

“Your angle sounds v interesting. However, unfortunately we don’t commission any freelance content on HuffPost, so not sure how you’d like to proceed. You are welcome to write a blog for us (uncommissioned, unpaid) or you could supply quotes and info and I could credit you? Let me know if either of these work for you.”

AOL/HuffPo has $2.3 billion in revenue, yet they won’t pay journalists for stories…