The Controversial Huffington Post-AOL Merger: 7 Questions That Matter

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Don Hazen

The Controversial Huffington Post-AOL Merger: 7 Questions That Matter
The Huffington Post-AOL merger was quite a shock, and raises a number of questions about the future of journalism.

February 9, 2011 |


News that the Huffington Post had been bought by AOL, a company with more than $2.5 billion in revenue, for $315 million, almost all in cash, was quite a shock -- to the chattering classes, to millions of HuffPo's readers and to commenters. It was also a shock to the site's thousands of bloggers, who have been providing free content for the privilege of being part of the public discourse and promoting their efforts at a place they knew to be independent and welcoming of strong opinions.

Initially, the sale was understood in the media as an amazing accomplishment for Arianna Huffington and her partner Ken Lehrer, who together started the Huffington Post six years ago with a modest investment, and saw it grow via a potent combination of personality branding, aggressive content, and the mastering of the social networking and search engine optimization tools that have come to rule the web.

The sense was/is that Huffington is quite the marvel; Slate media critic Jack Shafer called her a "first-rate entrepreneur, incubator of talent and media visionary." But then a second reaction set in: outrage that Huffington had partly profited from the unpaid labor of bloggers, along with concerns that the new partnership would be very bad for journalism and hence a vibrant democracy.

Los Angeles Times writer Tim Rutten led the second wave of critics by saying that "to grasp the HuffPo business model, you need to picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates." He continued, "The fact is that AOL and the Huffington Post simply recapitulate in the new media many of the worst abuses of the old economy's industrial capitalism — the sweatshop, the speedup and piecework; huge profits for the owners; desperation, drudgery and exploitation for the workers." ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/media/149860/the_controversial_huffington_post-aol_merger%3A_7_questions_that_matter/

[monmouth]

1. I'm a fan of Jason Linkins, curious to see if he will stay...n/t

[Dot Com]

2. I'm curious if the

domain name is going to stay where it is or will AOL try to force readers onto their domain?