HuffPo Contributors Would Like a Share

At 7:48 a.m. on Feb. 7, the morning after AOL executives had completed a deal to purchase the Huffington Post for $315 million, the thousands of actors, authors, activists, academics, and comedians who collectively make up the blogging corps of the Huffington Post received an e-mail from the site's founder. "Thank you," Arianna Huffington wrote, "for being such a vital part of the HuffPost family -- which has suddenly gotten a whole lot bigger." Huffington assured the bloggers that although her role is shifting -- she will oversee all content at the new, merged venture -- their roles aren't. "Together, our companies will have a combined base of 117 million unique U.S. visitors a month -- and 250 million around the world -- so your posts will have an even bigger impact on the national and global conversation," she wrote. "That's the only real change you'll notice -- more people reading what you wrote." Conspicuously unmentioned: the subject of pay. Since its launch in 2005, the Huffington Post has relied on unpaid contributors to stock the news-and-aggregation site. It's an arrangement unlikely to change soon.