Rolling Stone, not exactly known as a bastion of right-wing Obama bashers, is slamming Obama for America for turning to unpaid crowd-sourcing for a jobs poster. Writing for RS, Tim Dickinson even manages to get in a jab at the Huffington Post as well:
The Obama campaign has more than $60 million cash on hand. In an economy this bad, you'd think a presidential campaign that flush would be happy to pay good money for a talented designer to create a campaign poster.
But the folks at Obama campaign have taken a page from the Arianna Huffington book of economic exploitation and called on "artists across the country" to create a poster ... for free.
And here's a bit that might strike a sour note with many ad-agency folks out there: Even if you don't win the contest, Obama for America, according to the fine print, owns your intellectual property .
So as not to pull a full Huffpo,I'll send you to Rolling Stone to see what one designer, who has actually donated cash to the Obama campaign, has to say about all of this.
Members of the design and ad community did a great deal of free work for Obama in 2008. But at the time, he was selling hope and change to people eager to buy. With too much of that change going in the wrong direction, this time they're eager to get paid--especially if the campaign in question is sitting on a war chest that makes it "the 1%" of the political field.