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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on February 07, 2011, 12:16:47 PM
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When HuffPost Met AOL: "A Merger of Visions"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huffington-post-aol_b_819373.html#comments
Read More: Aol , Aol Acquires Huffington Post , Aol Buys Huffington Post , Aol Buys Huffpo , Aol Huffington Post , Huffington Post , Huffington Post Aol , Huffington Post Aol Merger , Huffington Post Media Group , Huffington Post Sold , Huffpo Aol , Huffpost Aol , Media News
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I've used this space to make all sorts of important HuffPost announcements: new sections, new additions to the HuffPost team, new HuffPost features and new apps. But none of them can hold a candle to what we are announcing today.
When Kenny Lerer and I launched The Huffington Post on May 9, 2005, we would have been hard-pressed to imagine this moment. The Huffington Post has already been growing at a prodigious rate. But my New Year's resolution for 2011 was to take HuffPost to the next level -- not just incrementally, but exponentially. With the help of our CEO, Eric Hippeau, and our president and head of sales, Greg Coleman, we'd been able to make the site profitable. Now was the time to take leaps.
At the first meeting of our senior team this year, I laid out the five areas on which I wanted us to double down: major expansion of local sections; the launch of international Huffington Post sections (beginning with HuffPost Brazil); more emphasis on the growing importance of service and giving back in our lives; much more original video; and additional sections that would fill in some of the gaps in what we are offering our readers, including cars, music, games, and underserved minority communities.
Around the same time, I got an email from Tim Armstrong (AOL Chairman and CEO), saying he had something he wanted to discuss with me, and asking when we could meet. We arranged to have lunch at my home in LA later that week. The day before the lunch, Tim emailed and asked if it would be okay if he brought Artie Minson, AOL's CFO, with him. I told him of course and asked if there was anything they didn't eat. "I'll eat anything but mushrooms," he said.
The next day, he and Artie arrived, and, before the first course was served -- with an energy and enthusiasm I'd soon come to know is his default operating position -- Tim said he wanted to buy The Huffington Post and put all of AOL's content under a newly formed Huffington Post Media Group, with me as its president and editor-in-chief.
I flashed back to November 10, 2010. That was the day that I heard Tim speak at the Quadrangle conference in New York. He was part of a panel on "Digital Darwinism," along with Michael Eisner and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.
At some point during the discussion, while Tim was talking about his plans for turning AOL around, he said that the challenge lay in the fact that AOL had off-the-charts brand awareness, and off-the-charts user trust and loyalty, but almost no brand identity. I was immediately struck by his clear-eyed assessment of his company's strengths and weaknesses, and his willingness to be so up front about them.
As HuffPost grew, Kenny and I had both been obsessed with what professor Clayton Christensen has famously called "the innovator's dilemma." In his book of the same name, Christensen explains how even very successful companies, with very capable personnel, often fail because they tend to stick too closely to the strategies that made them successful in the first place, leaving them vulnerable to changing conditions and new realities. They miss major opportunities because they are unwilling to disrupt their own game.
After that November panel, Tim and I chatted briefly and arranged to see each other the next day. At that meeting, we talked not just about what our two companies were doing, but about the larger trends we saw happening online and in our world. I laid out my vision for the expansion of The Huffington Post, and he laid out his vision for AOL. We were practically finishing each other's sentences.
Two months later, we were having lunch in LA and Tim was demonstrating that he got the Innovator's Dilemma and was willing to disrupt the present to, if I may borrow a phrase, "win the future." (I guess that makes this AOL's -- and HuffPost's -- Sputnik Moment!)
There were many more meetings, back-and-forth emails, and phone calls about what our merger would mean for the two companies. Things moved very quickly. A term sheet was produced, due diligence began, and on Super Bowl Sunday the deal was signed. In fact, it was actually signed at the Super Bowl, where Tim was hosting a group of wounded vets from the Screamin' Eagles. It was my first Super Bowl -- an incredibly exciting backdrop that mirrored my excitement about the merger and the future ahead.
By combining HuffPost with AOL's network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus, and international reach, we know we'll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform.
Remember my New Year's resolution? It's coming true -- and it's only the beginning of February. Let's go down the checklist: Local? AOL's Patch.com covers 800 towns across America, providing an incredible infrastructure for citizen journalism in time for the 2012 election, and a focus on community and local solutions that have been an integral part of HuffPost's DNA. Check.
Original video? AOL's just finished building a pair of state-of-the-art video studios in New York and LA, and video views on AOL have gone up 400 percent over the last year. Check. More sections? AutoBlog, Music, AOL Latino, Black Voices, etc, etc, etc. fill gaps in HuffPost's coverage. Add all that to what HuffPost is doing with social, community, mobile, as well as our commitment to innovative original reporting and beyond-left-and-right commentary, and the blending will have a multiplier effect. Or, as Tim and I have been saying over the last couple of weeks: 1 + 1 = 11.
Far from changing our editorial approach, our culture, or our mission, this moment will be for HuffPost like stepping off a fast-moving train and onto a supersonic jet. We're still traveling toward the same destination, with the same people at the wheel, and with the same goals, but we're now going to get there much, much faster.
I am deeply grateful first of all to Kenny, whose insights and vision were instrumental to what we created together, and who will continue to give me advice and wisdom in the years to come. This deal would also not have been possible without Eric Hippeau, who together with Greg Coleman and his great sales team, monetized what HuffPost had created. Thank you to our truly amazing tech team, led by our CTO Paul Berry, and our passionate and gifted editorial team, led by our editor Roy Sekoff, who has been there since before Day One, and our managing editor Jai Singh. Their great work can now continue on a much bigger platform. And, of course, thank you to our HuffPost community, whose engagement, enthusiasm, loyalty, and support have been the foundation of HuffPost's growth.
We can't wait to begin the ride.
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ha ha ha ha- the comments over there from the pink panty brigade are priceless.
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a small business owner with a startup ends up making 130 mil for her bright idea.
what could be more republican than that?
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Brilliant move by her!
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Ha ha ha -I agree 240 - but the posters over there disagree.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4723910&mesg_id=4723910
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Brilliant move by her!
Damn right - that site is going down hill lately as it is. She got out on top.
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a small business owner with a startup ends up making 130 mil for her bright idea.
what could be more republican than that?
333 is more communist than republican
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333 is more communist than republican
No, I aplaud her 100%. the people at HP and DU are pissed off and threatening to leave.
Me, I got banned fom that site a long time ago. LOL>
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No, I aplaud her 100%. the people at HP and DU are pissed off and threatening to leave.
Me, I got banned fom that site a long time ago. LOL>
you're still more a communists than anything else
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Why is that?
BTW - I think AOL is nuts for this.
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AOL unloads 40% of its cash on Huffington Post buy
CNN Money ^ | 02/07/2011 | Julianne Pepitone
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- AOL's purchase of The Huffington Post is the splashiest in a long line of acquisitions -- but the buying spree likely ends here. AOL had to part with almost half of its cash to secure the deal.
As part of the $315 million acquisition, AOL unloaded $300 million in cash -- plus another $30 million in cash to cover expenses. That's more than 40% of the $802 million in cash that AOL had on hand at the end of last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
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Why is that?
BTW - I think AOL is nuts for this.
here you go comrade
blaming the democratic process and the citizens of the country for choosing someone you don't like
leave it to someone who rants constantly about communism to post something like this and then write QFT x 100
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
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QFT x 100
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Trust me straw- if Sarah wins in 2012 - that same quote will show up with her name in it and quoted all over the place.
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No, I aplaud her 100%. the people at HP and DU are pissed off and threatening to leave.
And if libs are known for one thing, it's their resolve and committment.
Sheeit, nobody's leaving. They'll just be steered to signing up with AOL, and HuffPo will end up watering down their edgy stuff and moderating like crazy.
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Trust me straw- if Sarah wins in 2012 - that same quote will show up with her name in it and quoted all over the place.
and when you post it I'll point out that you're nothing but a piece of shit communist
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Trust me straw- if Sarah wins in 2012 - that same quote will show up with her name in it and quoted all over the place.
If sarah wins in 2012, I will pay homeless people to vote Obama lol...
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If sarah wins in 2012, I will pay homeless people to vote Obama lol...
They already do! :P
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How much of that will she be donating to the less fortunate? I'm guessing somewhere between $500 and $1000. Ahh yes, America, the country where you can despise everything about it and still get filthy rich.
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If sarah wins in 2012, I will pay homeless people to vote Obama lol...
that dumb twat has no interest in public service and won't run
she's perfectly happy suckering t-baggers to part with the hard earned dollars and having twitter feuds like the 13 year old child
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Pretty impressive.
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Hey HuffPo Bloggers - Was It Fun Working For Free To Make Arianna Richer?
Legal Insurrection ^ | February 8, 2011 | Professor William Jacobson
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First, let me congratulate Arianna Huffington on selling The Huffington Post to AOL for a reported $315 million. Isn't America a great place? Arianna came up with a great business model. Create a place where liberals could tell each other how smart they were, where they could write blog posts without being paid, and where they could create a community of commenters who routinely attacked the evil Republicans...and then sell out for mucho dinero.
It always amazed me that HuffPo bloggers (not the handful of well paid staffers, but the great unwashed) thought they were so special by being allowed to blog at HuffPo, when in fact they were being treated as unindentured servants. They were able leave, but they were working for free to help Arianna build a business.
Who knew that the website devoted to a living wage and moral imperatives actually manged to get liberal bloggers to work for free to make money for the boss-lady and her investment banking investors.
There's a sucker born every minute....
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I heard about this on Beck's radio show. I started to check it out but my computer froze up.
PLEASE hook me up with a link! The weeping, the sackcloth and ashes.....this has to be some priceless stuff.
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I heard about this on Beck's radio show. I started to check it out but my computer froze up.
PLEASE hook me up with a link! The weeping, the sackcloth and ashes.....this has to be some priceless stuff.
Its typical DUmpster stuff.
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I dunno.... quite a few of them made a reputation for themselves and were able to move from nobody to national pundit thanks to such a platform.
You can guarantee any local yokel right-wing radio host would KILL to be able to pen articles to be placed on Limbaugh's home page, right?
They work for exposure. They're not suckers... it doesn't exactly take more than an hour to write one of those silly posts... maybe less... and suddenly they're propelled to the national stage.
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Hey HuffPo Bloggers - Was It Fun Working For Free To Make Arianna Richer?
Legal Insurrection ^ | February 8, 2011 | Professor William Jacobson
________________________ ____________
First, let me congratulate Arianna Huffington on selling The Huffington Post to AOL for a reported $315 million. Isn't America a great place? Arianna came up with a great business model. Create a place where liberals could tell each other how smart they were, where they could write blog posts without being paid, and where they could create a community of commenters who routinely attacked the evil Republicans...and then sell out for mucho dinero.
It always amazed me that HuffPo bloggers (not the handful of well paid staffers, but the great unwashed) thought they were so special by being allowed to blog at HuffPo, when in fact they were being treated as unindentured servants. They were able leave, but they were working for free to help Arianna build a business.
Who knew that the website devoted to a living wage and moral imperatives actually manged to get liberal bloggers to work for free to make money for the boss-lady and her investment banking investors.
There's a sucker born every minute....
LOL!
(http://www.forumspile.com/Owned/Owned-Burn_the_flag.gif)
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Huffpo Readers Revolt
by The Daily Beast
February 7, 2011 | 11:49pm
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Some of Arianna Huffington’s most-devoted users are livid about the sale of their favorite news site to AOL, according to a Daily Beast survey of their commenters. We reveal why they’re so ticked.
Along with robust traffic, leftward leanings, and unpaid bloggers, The Huffington Post has earned a reputation for involved users, who leave comments by the dozen, the hundred, or the thousand on even the most arcane stories. Little surprise then that Arianna Huffington’s announcement Monday that her beloved site would be sold to AOL for $315 million drew nearly 7,000 comments within the first 24 hours.
So how did these users, collectively, feel about the deal? Pretty lousy, it turns out. The Daily Beast took the temperature of The Huffington Post community by wading through those comments, and randomly selecting 500 that expressed a clear opinion for or against the sale, taking care to avoid counting repeat commenters and also pulling data from all times of the day. From this large sample, a whopping 81 percent (405) opposed the acquisition in terms that ranged from confused to pessimistic to, most frequently, downright livid. Only 19 percent (95) were optimistic, though many of those were far closer to neutral.
Politics was a driving force. The majority who posted worried deeply that the site has compromised its liberal principles by “selling out” to a large media corporation, expressing fears that creeping conservatism and draconian comment moderators will shut down its lively debate.
“We made HuffPost and we are being abandoned,” one aggrieved reader wrote. “They will aim for the center. That’s where the big money is.” Another added: “Corporate greed and intelligent analysis don’t merge.” Others couldn’t even bear to read the news: “I have no interest reading about yet another monopoly creation and the slow erosion of diversity in terms of news sources.”
“It’s like Friendster buying Facebook.”
Earl Gibson III / AP Photo
• Arianna Huffington: This Is My Last ActWithin hours after the merger was announced, Huffington Post readers had even made a game of one-upping each other with metaphors that conveyed the depth of their despair about the sale. “This feels like walking into my credit union only to find out it was bought by Bank of America,” one said. “[It’s] like Carol Channing taking over for Fergie in the Black Eyed Peas. Legendary, but past the expiration date by about 10 years,” another lamented. A user with the tech analogy might have been the closest to the broader sentiment: “It’s like Friendster buying Facebook.”
Readers were concerned about what they almost unanimously perceive to be AOL’s conservative bias (the deeply political undercurrent of the comments raises the question of whether The Huffington Post might have a Silent Majority too cowed to post). But some expressed faith in Arianna Huffington to continue to represent liberal values. “She's proven herself to be a defender of progressive thought and her work in that realm gives her all of the capital [she deserves] to move this site in the direction that she deems best,” one wrote. Others were even optimistic that the AOL partnership might expand the site’s reach: “Maybe a long shot, but still, with the promise of more local areas reached, HuffPost will enter some of these red enclaves and bring a little blue in there.” One commenter said they hoped AOL might fund more investigative journalism.
But the optimists were vastly overshadowed by the wails of betrayal. Not only is AOL a greedy media conglomerate like all the rest, they said, but it’s one that died way back in another era of the Web. “I don't have a phone line close to my computer!” one reader quipped. Responding to Huffington’s praise for AOL’s “off-the charts” brand recognition, another said, “AOL has ‘off the charts notoriety for failure to innovate. There is no name in cyberspace with more negative baggage.” Other commenters set about finding AOL a new slogan. One suggested, “AOL, the Internet for people who don’t know what the Internet is.”
In between their eulogies for the site some claimed they would no longer be visiting, Huffington Post readers traded tips about how to cancel their accounts, made guesses as to how long they could keep themselves away from their tight community of commenters, and pitched suggestions for alternate Web hangouts. Talking Points Memo, Salon, and AntiWar.com were popular suggestions. One took a more humorous approach: “I think we should all move over to FoxNation and cause all of them to have aneurysms.”
David Sessions researched and wrote this story, in collaboration with Lizzie Crocker, Josh Dzieza, and Caroline Linton.
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
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LOL @ people posting on HuffPo that they aren't going to post on HuffPo anymore!
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LOL @ people posting on HuffPo that they aren't going to post on HuffPo anymore!
As if she gives a shit. She's got her money.
Props to her for duping all those morons into wasting thousands of hours of their time contributing free content to that website. OWNED.
"Progressive". LOL!
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Huffington Post 'Slave' Writers in Revolt Over AOL Sale
By R.B. Stuart, February 9th, 2011
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As a contributor to The Huffington Post since 2008, I have posted 25 original articles that I value at more than $25,000, for free.
So eager to have a platform for my stories about U. S. soldiers returning from Iraq with Cancer, I didn’t ask for payment; I merely handed over the 20 to 30 hours of reporting on each piece gratis.
Over that period, I had asked Arianna Huffington several times for financial support. But after being referred to the D.C. based Huffington Post Investigative Fund as a candidate for payment, I was turned down by the fund, as well as by Executive Editor Roy Sekoff .
I become incensed to learn that in December The Huffington Post hired away two New York Times editors for well over $100,000 each.
Then to receive an E-mail from Arianna and Roy about their “exciting news” of the AOL take over, I was less than enthusiastic.
Do they really think 6,000 slave writers will continue to write for free for an international conglomerate like AOL, which pays their web writers, even if it is meager?
AOL made the deal while they courted her over the weekend at the Super Bowl. Not only did they buy out The Huffington Post for $315 million, but $300 million of that amount is in cash.
Essentially, the 6,000 writers Arianna lured with coveted bylines, then exploited while the site raked in ad revenue in the millions of dollars have now been sold without their permission, under the guise that we’ll continue to write for AOL for free.
It is presumptuous and arrogant to say the least.
The only way to respond to this downward spiral for writers who are providing original content for not even a slap on the back, is to withdraw.
We have grumbled over the years that our craft has lost its value with technical advancement. Web writing will never compare to print—in respect nor payment—unless we change it.
Since the Internet is unregulated when it comes to rights for writers and photographers, then my fellow scribers, this should be a turning point where we no longer write for free.
How can one person sell another’s work, without their permission, unless they are slave labor without laws protecting them?
We might have had no rights contributing to The Huffington Post. But it is OUR decision now whether to write for free for the new owners.
This may be an exciting payday for the masthead, but for the thousands of writers who have kept the site in business and lucrative for five years, it is another beast all together.
If AOL assumes it’s business as usual without pay for Huffington Post writers, then the executives brokering the deal need to think again.
Arianna not only sold her soul as well as her ship of slaves, but in my opinion, she sowed the seeds of her own demise with this act of greed and exploitation.
And I may not be the only contributor who needs a glass of water to wash the bitter taste of this deal from my mouth.
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R. B. Stuart is a New York author, freelance writer, columnist, poet and photographer. She has written for Glamour magazine, Global Post, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Distinction magazine, The New York Sun, The Improper, Newsday, Hamptons Online, Long Island magazine, The Independent, Elements magazine and Real Estate New York. She is a contributing writer for The Huffington Post. For more, check out RBStuart.com
Related Posts
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Ha h ah aa ha ha ha
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Haha ha - the 'progressives" were played for punk ass bitches.
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latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten-column-huffington-aol-20110209,0,7406565.column
latimes.com
Op-Ed
AOL ♥ HuffPo. The loser? Journalism
To grasp the Huffington Post's business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.
Tim Rutten
February 9, 2011
Advertisement
Whatever the ultimate impact of AOL's $315-million acquisition of the Huffington Post on the new-media landscape, it's already clear that the merger will push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy.
That's a development that will hurt not only the people who gather and edit the news but also readers and viewers.
To understand why, it's helpful to step back from the wide-eyed coverage focused on foundering AOL's last-ditch effort to stave off the oblivion of irrelevance, or Brentwood-based Arianna Huffington's astonishing commercial achievement in taking her Web news portal from startup to commercial success in less than six years.
The media-saturated environment in which we live has been called "the information age" when, in fact, it's the data age. Information is data arranged in an intelligible order. Journalism is information collected and analyzed in ways people actually can use. Though AOL and the Huffington Post claim to have staked their future on giving visitors to their sites online journalism, what they actually provide is "content," which is what journalism becomes when it's adulterated into a mere commodity.
Consider first AOL's pre-merger efforts, which centered on a handful of commentators and a national network of intensely local news sites called Patch. The quality of those efforts varies widely, but the best ones are edited by journalists who lost their jobs in the layoffs and buyouts that have beset traditional news organizations over the last decade. These editor-reporters are given reasonable benefits and salaries that are about what beginning reporters at major newspapers were paid three decades ago. Their contributors, by contrast, are paid a maximum of $50 an article, often less.
The results pretty much conform to the old maxim that you get what you pay for; the best Patch journalism almost invariably is being done by experienced journalists who do the work out of idealism or desperation. What happens when that pool of exploitable surplus labor dries up — as it will with time — is anybody's guess, but the smart money would bet on something that isn't pretty.
That's borne out by a memo from AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong on where his company's journalism is going. It's fairly chilling reading, ordering the company's editors to evaluate all future stories on the basis of "traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turnaround time." All stories, it stressed, are to be evaluated according to their "profitability consideration." All AOL's journalistic employees will be required to produce "five to 10 stories per day."
Note all the things that come before the quality of the work or its contribution to the public interest and you've arrived at an essential difference between journalism and content. It may start with exploiting reporters and editors, but it inevitably ends up exploiting its audience.
The other partner to this dubious arrangement is the Huffington Post, which is a new-media marvel of ingenuity, combining a mastery of editing geared to game the search engines that stimulate Web traffic and overhead that would shame an antebellum plantation. The bulk of the site's content is provided by commentators, who work for nothing other than the opportunity to champion causes or ideas to which they're devoted. Most of the rest of the content is "aggregated" — which is to say stolen — from the newspapers and television networks that pay journalists to gather and edit the news.
The Huffington Post is a brilliantly packaged product with a particular flair for addressing the cultural and entertainment tastes of its overwhelmingly liberal audience. To grasp its business model, though, you need to picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates. Given the fact that its founder, Huffington, reportedly will walk away from this acquisition with a personal profit of as much as $100 million, it makes all the Post's raging against Wall Street plutocrats, crony capitalism and the Bush and Obama administrations' insensitivities to the middle class and the unemployed a bit much.
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. No child labor, yet, but if there were more page views in it…
timothy.rutten@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
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i dont get it.... the guy complaining submitted 30 articles for FREE, and along the way asked a few times for money, but continued working for free because he enjoyed the platform it provided for his cause?
Sheeit, with AOL on board, he may even get a BIGGER platform/audience now. Instead, he's crying about something he freely agreed to?
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You feature ONE of those freebie-penned articles on the AOL home page, and some pothead lib author gets 10 million views on his feelgood piece on uniting the mainstream and off-stream media...
and suddenly all these crybaby volunteers submit their own just to try to be next. Hell, I bet a lot of AOL subscribers who will start writing... you have 20+ mill AOL subscribers who spend a big chunk of their day reading whatever AOLHuff feeds them.
Those writers will stomp feet cause it's what they do - find a cause and whine about it. But once they see a huffPo writer get 2 million views in a day, they will write (for free) faster than ever.
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Are you going to be a contributor?
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Hahaha, this is too funny. The liberal's bastion and soap box for "progressive values" falls victim to capitalism.
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Are you going to be a contributor?
haha shit no... getbig is my true love and i'm barely posting these days.
plus i very rarely read huffpost... i dont like the format and layout.
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After they banned me for attacking mobaccas food obsession, both in terms of her personal consumption of lobster, caviar, champaigne, etc, as well as her obsession to run our lives, I have not spent any time over there.
Truth.
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After they banned me for attacking mobaccas food obsession, both in terms of her personal consumption of lobster, caviar, champaigne, etc, as well as her obsession to run our lives, I have not spent any time over there.
Truth.
33,
do you support a sin tax on tobacco products?
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No. Either treat it like everything else or ban it altogether.
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No. Either treat it like everything else or ban it altogether.
i see.
are you okay with a sin tax on alcohol?
Cuz let's face it... people who drink and smoke are a shitload more likely to get sick and cost taxpayer $. I'm fine with them paying more into the system beforehand.
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i see.
are you okay with a sin tax on alcohol?
Cuz let's face it... people who drink and smoke are a shitload more likely to get sick and cost taxpayer $. I'm fine with them paying more into the system beforehand.
Are you okay with a sin tax on fast food? People like you, who subsist on McDonald's and other trashy fast foods, are costing this country just as much in healthcare costs as the alcohol drinkers are.
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haha shit no... getbig is my true love and i'm barely posting these days.
plus i very rarely read huffpost... i dont like the format and layout.
I've never read it other than to look at a link or something that someone has sent me
I always thought the layout was messy
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That monmey is being pissed away.
I don't favor sin taxes. Have a flat sales tax across the board or ban tobacco altogether. I'm not into the govt deciding what sins I have should be taxed more than others.
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monmey ???
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Are you okay with a sin tax on fast food? People like you, who subsist on McDonald's and other trashy fast foods, are costing this country just as much in healthcare costs as the alcohol drinkers are.
agreed, and i'd support such a bill, definitely.
it's only mcd breakfast 1-2 times a week, but sure, i'd support it.
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Julio's employment requires you to eat there 5 x week.
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The thing I hate most about hp iis how they deal w the comments section. Its awful.
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Julio's employment requires you to eat there 5 x week.
that man can sizzle a mean mcgriddle. well worth the extra tax, if need be.
for real, it would only be an extra buck or two a week, wouldn't hurt me. if I ate mcd 15 times a week...
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The thing I hate most about hp iis how they deal w the comments section. Its awful.
LoL
do they delete your comments?
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I meant in terms of the formatting.
As far as my being banned, I can't lie, it was fun causing meltdowns by those lefties over there.
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Those dorks on HP think they should have gotten paid for blogging, etc...Now that the Huffington post was bought out.
On a side note AOL is still around.?.
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Those dorks on HP think they should have gotten paid for blogging, etc...Now that the Huffington post was bought out.
On a side note AOL is still around.?.
I thought the same thing. They were never known for their business sense. This HP buyout won't be any different.
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Huffington Post, AOL and the perils of free labour (Arianna's slave revolt continues...)
Toronto Star ^ | 2/12/11 | Heather Mallick
There are 15,000 reasons the Huffington Post deal to sell itself to AOL for $315 million might founder and they’re very loud chatty reasons.
They are bloggers who wrote for the website unpaid because they had faith in its owner, Arianna Huffington, and believed the site was independent, truthful and courageous in an American media landscape gone sour. I believed it, too, but then I went through a dreamy Obama phase where if you asked me if I believed in Tinkerbell, I would clap three times.
Thanks, Arianna. Funny how money changes everything.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.com ...
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Huffington Post contributors go on strike, propose collective bargaining
The Daily Caller ^ | 3/4/2011 | Steven Nelson
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Arianna Huffington is being cast by some unpaid Huffington Post contributors as an unethical robber baron. With Huffington awash in funds from AOL’s $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post, contributors have called a strike to demand proper compensation.
The Huffington Post, established in 2005, emerged as a leading source of aggregated news content and liberal commentary written by unpaid contributors. With the success of the site, founder Arianna Huffington rocketed to national fame, frequently appearing as a guest on cable news programs.
Bill Lasarow, Publisher and Co-Editor of Visual Art Source, announced that his organization is “now going on strike. For now, at least, no more content from us will appear on the Huffington Post.”
Visual Art Source members have contributed content to the Huffington Post for free since 2010. Lasarow wrote that “it is unethical to expect trained and qualified professionals to contribute quality content for nothing.”
How far the strike will spread is currently unclear. But Lasarow wrote that his group is calling for broad participation by Huffington Post contributors. “I am also calling upon all others now contributing free content, particularly original content to the Huffington Post to also join us in this strike,” wrote Lasarow.
Lasarow wrote that his organization has two demands. The first, that the Huffington Post develop a system for paying writers and bloggers. The second, for the site to differentiate between paid promotional content and writers’ work.
The group proposes a system of collective bargaining for contributors, expressing hope that they band together to “form a negotiating partnership with Huffington/AOL in order to pursue these and other important matters so as to professionalize this relationship.”
While not paying contributors is perfectly legal, Lasarow noted, it is “unethical and oh so very hypocritical.”
The group hopes that Huffington will “do the right thing” and agree to their requests. However, Lasarow wrote that he would be unsurprised if “like the corporate titans of the American Right… Ms Huffington, whom I am certain has a good heart and only the best intentions, were to assume the obvious position: Who needs these people anyway?”
Robert Scheer wrote in The Nation on February 23 a defense of Huffington’s system of not paying contributors. “In defense of the use of unpaid bloggers, of which I happen to be one among the many who appear on a regular basis on the Huffington Post, we are not exploited,” wrote Scheer.
The contributors on strike claim that well-known contributors “who will never need to be concerned about pay scales” should be ashamed of themselves for abetting the current situation.
Scheer claimed that “for most contributors, the op-ed page was never a serious source of income.”
Huffington dismissed the strike Thursday at a conference hosted by PaidContent in New York City. “Go ahead, go on strike,” Huffington said, deriding “the idea of going on strike when no one really notices.”
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ha ha ha ha ha ha! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
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The group proposes a system of collective bargaining for contributors, expressing hope that they band together to “form a negotiating partnership with Huffington/AOL in order to pursue these and other important matters so as to professionalize this relationship.”
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I really am speechless how stupid these idiot are. Its almost as if I pity these dupes at this point.
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Huffington dismissed the strike Thursday at a conference hosted by PaidContent in New York City. “Go ahead, go on strike,” Huffington said, deriding “the idea of going on strike when no one really notices.”
Seems quite appreciative of the job they did building her site for her. Hahaha.
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She knows there will be thousands lined up after these silly goofs stamp their feet to take their place.
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:D
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April 12, 2011 8:45 AM PDT
Blogger targets AOL, seeks class-action status
by Caroline McCarthy
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(Credit: Huffington Post) A political activist and longtime blogger for The Huffington Post filed suit Tuesday against the digital publication, its founders Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, and its new parent company AOL, citing its use of unpaid blogger talent. The plaintiff, Jonathan Tasini, is seeking class-action status; he filed on behalf of a "putative class" of the estimated 9,000 people who have been published on The Huffington Post without compensation.
"Arianna Huffington is pursuing the Wal-Martization of creative content and a Third World class of creative people," Tasini said in a press release. "Actually, that is unfair to Wal-Mart because at least Wal-Mart pays its workers something for the value those workers create. In Arianna Huffington's business model, economic gain is only reserved for her. Everyone else, apparently, is expected to work for free regardless of the value they create. Greed and selfishness is the order of the day."
Tasini has been a prominent online advocate for labor rights, specifically those of freelance writers, for about a decade now. He ran unsuccessfully for national political office several times, including a campaign to challenge then-New York senator Hillary Clinton in 2006, but his most high-profile role thus far has been as the face of the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Tasini, in which freelancers petitioned against the digital distribution without permission or compensation of articles that were originally intended to run in print. The judgment was decided in favor of the freelancers.
Tasini's complaint against AOL and The Huffington Post, filed in a New York district court, requests approximately $105 million in damages.
AOL purchased The Huffington Post for $315 million earlier this year, an acquisition that reinvigorated complaints on behalf of critics who have long decried its use of unpaid talent in exchange for "exposure." (The Huffington Post also employs full-time, salaried reporters and editors.)
One of the most prominent Huffington Post bloggers, Mayhill Fowler--who reported Barack Obama's "clinging to guns and religion" quotation during the 2008 election race--publicly began decrying the unpaid blogger model last fall, saying that she believed she was entitled to compensation because she was contributing reporting rather than opinion pieces.
When CNET contacted The Huffington Post for comment, representatives from the company had not yet seen Tasini's lawsuit. But spokesman Mario Ruiz said via e-mail, "Such a lawsuit would be completely baseless. Our bloggers utilize our platform to connect and ensure that their ideas and views are seen by as many people as possible. It's the same reason hundreds of people go on TV shows--to broadcast their views to as wide an audience as possible."
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Caroline McCarthy
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Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos.
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