People who are doing work need to be paid for doing it. Period.

I was actually quite willing to work my fucking ass off to run a newsroom. But the deal should have been that as long as I did exemplary work, I'd be allowed to keep doing it. I'd still be working 60 hours per week minimum and taking calls at all hours for $40K and shitty benefits if the industry leaders had done their jobs properly. Instead, they blew it by insisting we give everything away for free. Even beginning reporters understand that's not a sustainable business model.