The Huffington Post may not pay its bloggers, but that doesn't mean writing for the Internet has to be a totally fruitless endeavor. Allvoices is a new citizen journalism website (which, maybe you haven't heard, is kind of a big deal these days) that is willing to pay-per-pageview for a blogger's take on things. So it's working under a Denton-esque model, which has made a few web writers modestly rich while dismissing other skilled talent unwilling to post YouTube bait. So how will Allvoices be different? By publishing actual worthwhile stories, and increasing the rate card.

"Users who compile 100,000 pageviews over a six-month period will receive $1,000, and those who hit 1 million pageviews will get $10,000. That's twice the going rate these days at Gawker Media."

Put in these terms, a hundred thousand clicks doesn't seem that hard to get. Digg's most popular stories this week almost hit that and in the age of the viral video, where a hit video could attract millions of views and $0 in revenue, Allvoices could be a welcome change.

But attracting readers to your story in a publication that doesn't carry much weight, or readership, is the uphill battle. And basing new stories on a pageview auditing system is not exactly congruous to ethical reporting:

Paying a blogger or journalist based on pageviews puts the onus on the writer to get traffic and takes away from their main job of research and writing. Yes, we as freelance journalists should create work that has an audience, that people want to read, that resonates with the public. But there’s only one result of paying writers by pageview: They will pander, sensationalize and go for short-term gain over long-term value. And it does damage the site’s reputation.

Much like the NewsCred site from yesterday, Allvoices has a Utopian concept at heart — an honest to goodness citizen journalist site without agenda, where its own users decide on the reliability and credence of an individuals writing — but will most likely fall into the same trap of letting its stories be dictated by the "popular kids" on the site (those actually able to make some of that promised scratch), regardless of the story's credibility or lack there-of. It's a glossed up version of the New York Times Most Emailed list, which is stuffed with artificial trend stories and articles about being fat. Good luck with that.