The Seeking Alpha controversy

David Jackson, the founder of the Seeking Alpha site, which aggregates stuff written by bloggers and others about stocks and the markets, is fending off a controversy started by well-known money manager Barry Ritholtz, who has pulled his writing from the site after complaining that Seeking Alpha was taking too much of his content and writing bad headlines.

Jackson, in a post on the site, replies, “We know about our readers from our email subscribers, and they include employees in every major investment bank, and dozens of hedge funds and mutual funds. Jim Cramer said in an interview recently that he trawls Seeking Alpha for potential hires. We’re the only finance site that devotes the left column of every article page to links and information about the author (including two graphics if authors wish), and we’re constantly thinking about ways to add value for our contributors.

“Bloggers now have exposure that was unthinkable a few years ago. And instead of building audience by climbing on the treadmill of publishing multiple articles every day, they can now write thoughtful pieces when they’re ready to.

“Who doesn’t Seeking Alpha work for? We haven’t ruled out paying contributors in the future, but we’re not ready to do it now while we’re investing in growth (which we’re convinced our contributors will benefit greatly from). As a result, we never imagined we’d be attractive to bloggers who want to build media businesses, and sure enough a handful of such writers pulled out. Hopefully they’ll do well, but as more and more talented people publish free articles for exposure, career development and business leads, it gets tougher to make a living from paid content.”

Read more here. Ritholtz’s original complaint is here.