Category: Huffington Post

Arianna’s Power Scaled Back at AOL?

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Remember when AOL bought Huffington Post — for a “bazillion dollars,” as Joe Coscarelli says — and everybody’s first question was, “On what planet does this deal make basic business sense?”

Here you had the erstwhile America Online, which had made big bucks back in the original 1990s Internet boom, when dial-up modems were still the deal, before Gmail, before you bought high-speed digital access through your cable company (or logged on at free WiFi hotspots). Having failed to exploit its original massive footprint in the online world, AOL decided to buy HuffPo, a content provider that has “succeeded” — i.e., getting lots of page-views — without ever turning a profit on that traffic.

What’s the value of a money-losing content provider to a desperate declining online service provider? Such were the calculations required to make sense of AOL reportedly paying $315 for HuffPo’s estimated 25 million monthly “unique visitors.” Maybe you need an MBA to figure that out, or maybe I just didn’t do enough drugs back in the ’70s, because it made no damned sense at all to me. Reacting to the $315 million pricetag, I asked: “Did they misplace the decimal point?”

What it looked like, frankly, was the old pump-and-dump mentality of the Dot-Com Bubble era, hyping a start-up company to sell at an inflated price to an investor with more money than sense. And the suits at AOL certainly fit that description. As I noted at the time of the deal, AOL had reported losses of $782 million in 2010. These guys are experts at losing money, so therefore it made perfect sense for AOL to pay 10 times HuffPo’s 2010 estimated gross revenue (not profit, mind you, just revenue) and let Arianna “take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group,” with “oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations,” but even such services as Mapquest.

As might have been expected, that bizarre arrangement couldn’t last long, and there was a report this week that Arianna’s vast powers have recently been somewhat curtailed:

Arianna Huffington acknowledged Thursday that her portfolio at AOL Inc. is being scaled back to include only the Huffington Post, undoing a structure put in place when her website was acquired by AOL last year. . . .
After buying the Huffington Post for $315 million, AOL gave Ms. Huffington editorial oversight of all its properties, including tech-news site TechCrunch, the patch.com network of local news sites, MovieFone and MapQuest. In addition, more than 30 AOL properties, such as Politics Daily, were absorbed by the Huffington Post.The management structure created tensions with staff at some of the properties. Patch management, for instance, differed with Ms. Huffington over strategy for the local news sites, according to people familiar with the matter. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington quit in a public spat with Ms. Huffington.

Ah, remember that news last September? My headline at the time:

Arianna Huffington Fires Tech Blogger
AOL Paid $30 Million to Buy Out

TechCrunch was a valuable property, because Michael Arrington was a valuable blogger, and the fact that he was willing to walk away from a brand he had created was one of those “Houston, we have a problem” moments, a signal that whatever skills Arianna Huffington brought to AOL, personnel management wasn’t one of them. Continue reading Arianna’s Power Scaled Back at AOL? →

Robert Reich: Tea Party Strawman Flaming, Not The Greenwich Village Way

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by Smitty

The right is currently in a struggle to determine whether it will nominate a Ruling Class Overlord who says sufficiently conservative sounding things to take the nomination, the veers to the center to win the election. Alternatively, somebody with both high moral and conservative track records, e.g. Perry, Santorum or Bachmann, could be selected both to run and govern in a way that will reduce that thumping sound from the Founders’ graves.

Recalling that Riech is doing a convincing impression of a buffoon, his Huffington Post column becomes hilarious.

Some describe the underlying conflict as Tea Partiers versus the Republican establishment. But this just begs the question of who the Tea Partiers really are and where they came from.

The underlying conflict lies deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old.

As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.

It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri.

Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.

This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans — only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.

Read the whole thing, if you need a belly laugh. If you have history, pound history; if you have economics, pound economics; if you have neither, pound some strawmen.

The crucial point for all of the Left is that there is never a substantial economic argument to refute the Tea Party’s disdain for living in Reich’s blend of 1984 and Atlas Shrugged. Reich could at least refute Will’s devastating point that the Baby Boomer households have sucked up the wealth, to the detriment of anyone younger. Coming up with an argument would be like work, or something. Why not just point a finger?

Supreme Field Marshall of the Endless Strawman Horde, General Leopold von Stubble, said of Reich:

We do not fear Reich, for we produce strawmen at a rate even more prodigious than his destruction rate. What we fear is that the minds of his readers become tainted with facts. If people realize what a colossal joke Reich has become, they’ll quit listening. People attending to Reich’s endless stream of flatus is crucial for us to manage our high strawman production rate without flooding the market. Fortunately, with the election year coming up, we can expect President Obama to do his part to eliminate strawmen, so the pressure is off of Reich’s readers, at least through November 2012.

Unexpectedly, Puffington Host Editors Face Uncertainty About The Founders

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by Smitty

The Puffington Host editors offer this collection of GOP Congressmen using the word ‘uncertainty’. Props to Todd Young, USNA ’95, appearing at 0:55:

The Puffington Host, normally such a bastion of wisdom and erudition, is unexpectedly daft here:

With the economy in a slump for nearly four years, corporate executives and conservative politicians have repeatedly invoked “uncertainty” as a major barrier to American job-creation. The “uncertainty” jab is a go-to talking point for any congressional Republican looking to tag President Barack Obama as a tax-raising, regulation-obsessed foe of American businesses.
But according to banking data compiled by economic research firm Moebs Services, the uncertainty plaguing the American economy has nothing to do with government regulations or taxes on millionaires. It’s an uncertainty driven squarely by consumers and small-businesses who are worried about their short-term financial prospects. And it’s been going on since well before Obama took up residence in the White House.

It must be the case that Founding Father James Madison, and The Federalist #62 slipped their memory at the Puffington Host (emphasis mine):

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.

Another word for ‘no man. . .can guess’ would be. . .uncertainty?
Still further on:

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

Capitalists are reduced to the role of mice in a cage with the government python, wondering who gets devoured next.

Less metaphorically, there is the Stupor Committee. We all sort of know the story ends badly, on November 23rd, but no one can tell yet whose ox will be gored.

It sure is a good thing we have Moebs to guide us in this brave new world, since we’ve Progressed beyond the simple, common-sense analysis of Dead White Guys like Madison.

Democrat Supporter Says Romney ‘Masquerading as a Die-Hard Conservative’

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by Smitty

The Puffington Host has a simply incredible piece up about Mitt, featuring Rocky Anderson:

One of Mitt Romney’s oldest Democratic supporters says the Republican presidential contender is a “warm” and “decent” person who is only masquerading as a die-hard conservative to win the Republican nomination.
“Obviously the positions that Mitt’s taking now are different than the positions he did when he ran for and served as Governor of Massachusetts,” Rocky Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City, told HuffPost. “His handlers got to him and said, ‘This is what you need to do.’ And that’s what he’s doing to get elected.”

Are we to believe Romney is some Bullwinke, saying “Hey Rocky, watch me pull a nomination out of my hat!”?

BHO has pretty well destroyed any need for consistency from politicians, so maybe being on all sides of every major issue is a boon to Mitt.

Update: linked by Political Junkie Mom and Daily Pundit.

About The Acid Down At Zuccotti Park

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by Smitty

Lawrence Weschler is in need of prayer for his mental health:

So here’s my fantasy.

Chelsea gets pregnant, such that Hillary retires, around the middle of next year, to pursue a fresh, well-earned career as doting grandmother.

Obama has to choose a new secretary of state and appoints Joe Biden (the position the latter always wanted anyway).

By that point the coin has finally dropped and it has suddenly become desperately obvious to the Obama campaign operation that, governing as he has been doing over the last four years as an old style right-of-center Republican (somewhere between Nixon and Reagan), Obama has completely shredded his base, such that they’d better do something pretty radical if they are going to salvage the reelection campaign, especially given the dire state of the economy (not entirely not his fault).

So Obama chooses Elizabeth Warren as his second-term running mate.

Follow the link for the gut-wrenching conclusion.

Arianna Huffington Fires Tech Blogger AOL Paid $30 Million to Buy Out

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At least that’s what it looks like, but first the background: Remember, AOL in February paid upwards of $300 million to acquire HuffPo in a deal that reportedly gave Arianna “control of all of AOL’s editorial content.” That big effing deal happened less than six months after AOL paid a reported $30 million to buy TechCrunch, the super-popular technology/business blog started in 2005 by Michael Arrington.

So the news comes today that Arianna gave Arrington the boot:

TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington no longer works for TechCrunch, says Arianna Huffington, the president and editor-in-chief of AOLHuffington Post Media Group.
This contradicts some initial reports of Mr. Arrington’s new role, which said that Mr. Arrington would continue to report to Ms. Huffington, would retain the official title of “founding editor,” and would still be employed as a writer for TechCrunch.

This allegedly has something to do with Arrington starting a technology investment fund, a move decried as a violation of journalism ethics.

Now you understand why I’ve resisted all those lucrative offers* to sell TheOtherMcCain.com to international media conglomerates. You can’t get fired if you don’t have a boss. And I’d go back to driving a forklift before I’d work for a crazy bitch who talks like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

* This involves a definition of “lucrative offers” not quite as high as $300 million, and a definition of “international media conglomerates” that includes anyone stupid enough to offer money to buy a blog. A Venn diagram showing Set A as “people with lots of money” and Set B as “people who want to buy a blog” would show an extraordinarily tiny overlap in Set AB, none of whom have shown any interest in TheOtherMcCain.com — yet.

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HuffPo ‘Premium’? AOL ‘Desperate’?

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Arianna got the gold mine, AOL got the shaft:

AOL is up for sale according to many insiders in the know. Sources in the industry claim that AOL has met privately with the mega-law firm Watchell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and investment bank Allen & Company about putting the former ISP up for sale to the highest bidder.
While AOL is generating significant revenue of at least $1 Billion for the first 6 months of 2011, they are still losing a great deal of money and the purchase of HuffPost hasn’t helped their woes.
The HuffPost purchase, which was valued at $315M was widely criticized by both the press and pundits alike as a poor purchase decision, or at least one that didn’t make sense at those numbers. Since then, the merger of the company into AOL has been reported to have numerous management problems.
Despite HuffPost continuing to grow since its purchase, the advertising sales revenue has not been able to sell inventory at the level needed to support the organization. Part of the problem reportedly is that the sales team, lead by search advertising veterans has been unable to convince advertisers that they need to pay a premium cost to be on HuffPost and other AOL properties. . . .
AOL seems to now be desperate to find either a buyer, or at least a long term solution to solve their issues. It is clear that their management, seen by many as top heavy salary wise, is not suited to run a content company that needs to focus on cost cutting.

Look: Online advertising is a hard dollar. Advertisers either pay for page-views or pay for click-throughs, and they’ve got software to measure the actual performance of each ad buy. The idea that HuffPo readers are somehow special, so that advertisers should pay a “premium” to have access to those readers . . . well, why?

There is no plausible answer, nor is there any plausible answer for why a value-oriented investor would have paid anything like the $315 million AOL paid for HuffPo. That deal never made sense.

(Hat-tips: Hot Air Headlines via AOSHQ Headlines.)

Not News? Columbia Professor and Huffington Post Contributor David Epstein Pleads Guilty in Incest Case

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You will recall that Palin-hating blogger David Epstein was arrested in December and charged with felony incest for having sex with his adult daughter (now 24) from 2006 through 2009.

One of our readers has obtained court documents (for Case #2010NY090162) indicating that Epstein copped a plea to a misdemeanor charge of attempted incest. (Click the image to enlarge).

That ruling was on May 11 — two weeks ago — and yet I can find no news reports about Epstein’s conviction. You might think that at least the New York Times would find the disposition of this case newsworthy.

The alert reader who informed me of this previously unreported news also passed along the court documents to some members of the Columbia University faculty, resulting in this angry e-mail from Epstein’s lawyer:

From: Matthew Galluzzo
Date: Tue, May 24, 2011 at 7:17 PM
Subject: notice
To: [Redacted]

Mr. [Redacted], I am an attorney and I represent Dr. Epstein. Please be advised that he does not wish to receive any further communications from you ever again. I have already alerted the District Attorney’s Office to the emails you have sent him thus far, and should you ever contact him or me again, we will make the appropriate criminal complaint to law enforcement.

Matthew J. Galluzzo, Esq.
Galluzzo & Johnson LLP
48 Wall Street, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10005

Well, facts are facts and if Professor Epstein has now pleaded guilty, the presumption of innocence is over. Epstein is still listed as a faculty member on the Columbia University Web site. 

Is Epstein’s behavior something that the university tolerates or approves?

Someone should ask Professor John Huber ([email protected]), chairman of the Department of Political Science, or Columbia University President Lee Bollinger ([email protected]).

UPDATE: Linked by Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom — thanks!

UPDATE II: Linked by Ann Coulter — thanks!

UPDATE III: Linked by Don Surber and Piece of Work in Progress — thanks!

UPDATE IV: Linked by the American Pundit — thanks!

UPDATE V: Linked by POH Diaries and by Rodney Graves at Wizbang — thanks!

UPDATE VI: Linked by Maggie’s Notebook — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

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