All The Human Capital That's Fit To Exploit

Former New York Times contributor Virginia Postrel republishes her email to the Times’ flak catcher public editor, Clark Hoyt:

I strongly believe that the Times is using its market power to freeload on the human capital–including both personal reputations and the expensive process of learning things–of its freelancers, which is one reason it is so happy to have so many professors on board, (something that will end if you seriously start enforcing the prohibition against earning any money from anybody who might conceivably be a source for any theoretical future article). But, hey, you can always dig up some more 24 year olds.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.