A Web user who contributed to NBCNews.com’s citizen journalism site Newsvine has sued the company for allegedly depriving her of money she earned through a revenue share program.
Kathleen Wilkes of Wisconsin says in her lawsuit that she earned around $180 from Newsvine’s prior business model, which paid users 90% of ad revenue associated with material they posted to the site. Wilkes says she requested payment in February, but that the company refused to pay her.
Newsvine quietly revised its revenue-sharing program late last year, and as part of that shift, required contributors to claim any proceeds they were owed by the end of the year, Wilkes alleges. Newsvine informed users about the change by posting an article to its home page, according to the complaint.
But Wilkes says that like many other users, she never saw that article, which ran in November and carried the headline Newsvine Now Supports Google AdSense
. She also says the company buried the most critical information at the end of the article. The last two sentences of the article said that November was the last month that users would receive 90% of ad revenue. Newsviners must cash out — or donate — their earnings Monday, December 31st,
the article ended — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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