AOL buying Huffington Post

This move doesn't seem to bode well for the Patch model. Don't know what to think. Arianna Huffington will take control of AOL's editorial content, including Patch. I don't know how long Patch can last now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes

 

Is on the AOL/Fanhouse thread
http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/2987562/

 

This shouldn't be buried in a multi-page thread about Fanhouse and people bitching about Garry Howard.

 

Agreed. Enormous media deal.

Well, this ought to fuck up the Huffington Post but good. If one thing is for certain after the last 10 years, it's that AOL can't do anything right. If there is another uncertainty, it is that Tim Armstrong is a complete idiot, and nobody at AOL is willing to tell the emperor he has no clothes.

Thpo anyone who thought HuffPo could be a true force in liberal politics, sorry.

 

What a revival of an image for Arianna. When her husband was running for the Senate against Feinstein, Ms. Huffington was regarded as a Grade A flake. Not having been a follower of the Huffington Post, I'm just wondering if someone in the know about such things can tell us whether the flake image is true, or is she a lot more than a figurehead?

 

There's big money to be made in writing for free ... for the people who don't pay the writers.

 

Absolutely huge. My first thought was "Goodbye to what we knew as HuffPo."

 

I loved her on "Green Acres."

 

She's much better on "The Cleveland Show."

 

She gave the keynote address at the Patch conference in late October about how she thought it was a swell idea. She could have just been BS'ing, of course, but I don't really think the two things (HuffPost and Patch) would be at odds with one another.

 

I look forward to the thread in early 2013 about AOL folding the Huffington Post brand into Newsweek.

 

Saw this first thing this morning. Very big, very strange to me.

I'm not dumb enough to think it's all that simple, so lets get that out of the way before you jump on me, but still: There's something extra disturbing about AOL spending $315 million on Huffington Post the same months they jettison most of FanHouse for $5 million.