AOL made a big move today by purchasing the über-blog online site Huffington Post. At a cost of $315 million, the online service assumes ownership of one of the best-known digital opinion (and increasingly news) sites in the country.
It's a great move. Though I don't agree with all of site co-founder Arianna Huffington's views about news media (I think she's too one-sided in her promotion of new media; I think her site often replicates and even enlarges upon the shallowness of modern news media), I do think she's very sharp and clearly knows what she's doing with her business. I also take it as a good sign that she will remain with the site as editor-in-chief.
It's also a great move because it shows that AOL is on the right track in finding a new identity. It demonstrates that the company is serious about staying alive in the digital present. Content counts, and Huffington Post brings the company a lot of content with a lot of daily readers (including me). AOL is a company that has been written off for dead countless times in the past decade, more than a few times by people who lost millions of dollars in the epically disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger. But now we see the new AOL emerging, and it looks like it is a company to watch once again.
For more of a taste of Huffington's media views: Below is a video from 2008, in which Huffington spoke to The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco about right-wing politics and new/old media. In the question and answer portion of the hour-long program, she spars with the moderator (a local political journalist) about blogs and the news media.
Showing posts with label arianna huffington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arianna huffington. Show all posts
Monday, February 7, 2011
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
So Much for the Theory that Blogs Would Save News
The Huffington Post is having a featured sale this month! You can tell, because they promote it all over the place day after day after day. Check it out: Move your money out of big banks into smaller banks. It's a way to punish big banks, see, and it's Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington's pet cause of the moment. So it's featured all over the front page of HuffPo. Repeatedly. As if it's a national movement with broad grassroots support when it's really just a manufactured campaign by Huffington and her crew.
Sort of like the Tea Party of the Left.
What's happening to the political blogosphere? If you've been listening to some of the evangelists for blogs, they are supposed to be better than the mainstream media (and especially newspapers) at reporting real news and what people really care about because they can't be controlled. The blogosphere (a word that always reminds me of Blagojevich, but whatever) was said to be self-correcting, because bloggers will write whatever they want to, regardless of what big advertisers or media barons with agendas or politicians try to get them to do or say.
Media owners with agendas are nothing new, and they're not necessarily bad. When I was a kid (and too young to remember this myself), the Green Bay News-Chronicle ran a long and eventually successful campaign supporting the movement to build a third bridge in the city.
But that wasn't as shameless in its mixing of real news (look, this just isn't so important a movement that it deserves multiple news spots on HuffPo's home page) with a campaign, nor did it have the cult-of-personality feature that has started to take over Huffington's site.
Alas, it's probably the wave of the future. Huffington Post continues to grow (though I check it out less and less often, preferring Talking Points Memo), and media barons love their crusades. But newspapers did it better.
Sort of like the Tea Party of the Left.What's happening to the political blogosphere? If you've been listening to some of the evangelists for blogs, they are supposed to be better than the mainstream media (and especially newspapers) at reporting real news and what people really care about because they can't be controlled. The blogosphere (a word that always reminds me of Blagojevich, but whatever) was said to be self-correcting, because bloggers will write whatever they want to, regardless of what big advertisers or media barons with agendas or politicians try to get them to do or say.
Media owners with agendas are nothing new, and they're not necessarily bad. When I was a kid (and too young to remember this myself), the Green Bay News-Chronicle ran a long and eventually successful campaign supporting the movement to build a third bridge in the city.
But that wasn't as shameless in its mixing of real news (look, this just isn't so important a movement that it deserves multiple news spots on HuffPo's home page) with a campaign, nor did it have the cult-of-personality feature that has started to take over Huffington's site.
Alas, it's probably the wave of the future. Huffington Post continues to grow (though I check it out less and less often, preferring Talking Points Memo), and media barons love their crusades. But newspapers did it better.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Arianna Huffington on Politics and the Media
More Huffington, this time on one of her favorite (or least favorite?) topics: The role the media plays in setting or warping the political dialogue in this country.
She also has a few nice things to say about Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, I only got a bit of that part in this tape (too slow on the "on" button), but you can read her blog on the topic here.
Arianna Huffington on Why the GOP Is in Dire Straits
Huffington Post Editor Arianna Huffington spoke today at The Commonwealth Club of California. As part of her tour for her latest book (Right Is Wrong), she was making her case that the far right has taken over the Republican Party and driven it over a cliff.
Watch the video clip. More to come.
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