Well, this is something. In a post on HuffPo Canada, freelance writer Bob Beaty discusses the value of freelance content sites and asks writers to weigh in on them too. The conclusion of the article, in brief, is that while writers are severely underpaid by these sites and are dissuaded from putting any personality into their work to keep it generic and, presumably, widely marketable, the sites "serve several purposes and content needs." The question of whether the internet and its users really "need" low-quality, hastily written "how-to" articles isn't really addressed, and of course the post doesn't mention HuffPo's use of unpaid bloggers (because unpaid is different from barely paid, we suppose?), but we can applaud Beaty for raising questions about the "content mill" model and asking for feedback from both consumers and producers of articles for such sites. As of this morning, the post had no comments, but maybe you have something to say to HuffPo about pay rates for online writers?