The Last Post

From the point of view you express, one could extend it to say that every single one of us who post on this website are being exploited. The success of Habs Inside/Out is based on a two-pronged formula: contributions from experienced, award-winning professional journalists (supplementing the columns and articles that were previously available for free before the inception of this website on the Montreal Gazette website) and a forum with some very knowledgeable, passionate hockey fans. People come here for the community, for the ability to converse directly with journalists that have direct access to the Habs, and for the ability to spout off on all things Montreal Canadiens during games. As somebody else pointed out before, a site like this has perhaps helped the Gazette maintain its sports department, as newspapers are struggling with the economy and the changing way in which people seek out their information. A site like this, servicing as many people as it does, does not come cheaply: the Gazette may or may not be making scads of money off of the ads that are now running here and the increased traffic. I do know, having been here since its inception, that what began as a small little website has exploded into what we see now, with numerous server upgrades along the way and vastly increased bandwidth to pay for. The Gazette staff have rarely stepped in and curtailed the proliferation of advertisements by posters for their own blogs, many of which generate money for their authors through ad-revenue and/or financial compensation (such as Blog Nation). In fact, they have actively helped many of those people along the way by adding them to their "Sites We Like" bar on the side. My point is that many of the comments in here have been a little critical of the Gazette for exploiting the Other Wing contributors, criticism that I find to be a little unfair. From the outset, the Other Wing was a spotlight for some of us fans to get a bigger spotlight for our comments based on whatever criteria the HI/O powers used, comments that were being made before in the general comments section prior to the creation of the Other Wing. J.T. worried that her Other Wing contributions could potentially be closing the door for some aspiring journalist to get paid work in the media or that her volunteer contributions could make those of current bloggers (like Boone, for instance) redundant: that is completely fair and I applaud her for her principles, as I stated before, and I can completely understand her point of view. I just simply don't see any exploitation here, simply a nice gesture on their part to one of their most prolific and entertaining posters, and a nice gesture on her part to make a principled stand, something that is somewhat lacking in society today.