The Huffington Post
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Huffington Post (often shortened to HuffPost or HuffPo) is a political group weblog founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer. Begun on May 9, 2005, it is notable because of its early success and prominence as a predominantly leftist news and commentary outlet, and its feature of Huffington's network of prominent friends from various fields and viewpoints. Its name is most likely a play on The Washington Post, the prominent US newspaper.
/snip/
Controversy
22 June 2006: The Guardian newspaper has reported on alleged suppression of Huffington Post blog writer Peter Rost after he found evidence of harassment by Post technology manager Andy Yaco-Mink [1]
The George Clooney HuffPo fake blog scandal is not mentioned. What gives?
:)
Wikipedia link here.
20 comments:
I think Arianna is trying to figure out the best way to cook crow. She'll be eating it by the plate-full over this mess.
It's too bad 'cause she could've made it a great site.
Well I'm still holding out hope that Arianna doesn't really or truly understand what happened. She's smart but computer techs are way above her. AND I am sure she is so busy jetsetting that she WANTS to believe the partner and techs around her.
It's hard to try and realize that by making her site honest and open, she will INCREASE her traffic and thus her money, but it appears the money being offered by pfizer and other pharmas along with the cash she is generating is more important.
Just like the people she attacks.
I can only hope she sees and understands the damage she has allowed to happen to her site by refusing to get past the Money Trough she is eating from.
Otherwise she is just another Pig At The Trough Whore.
I edited the controversy section to include a link to this site doc. :)
Dr. Rost,
I fixed Wikipedia for you:
Controversy
16 March 2006: George Clooney states that he didn't compose the blog post that appeared on the Huffington Post. Arianna Huffington pieced it together from quotes of his television interviews without his permission and allegedly threatened him that exposing the controversy would be bad for his career. [1]
22 June 2006: The Guardian newspaper has reported on alleged suppression of Huffington Post blog writer Peter Rost [2]after he found evidence of harassment by Post technology manager Andy Yaco-Mink [3]
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
now dr. rost has a new career - blogging about himself. not only can he embrace victimhood, but he can let others use him as a political tool. how nice.
Looks like we were right, and the paid Peretti trolls have now come to attack this blog & everybody.
Such a farcical scam, I say its time the light shineth down on all of it!!!
Yep sure looks like a huffho troll to me too.
Waaaaaaaaaaa It must really hurt knowing that as long as this is up even advertisers might start wanting more proof of veiwership vs those who have ad blockers.
I am almost willing to bet most people have ad blockers and that the advertisers MIGHT be hitting one out of a hundred viewers.
I've talked to more than a few people who said they didn't know the place had ads either.
Asvertisers might want to know this information.
antishill,
They can't fire Peretti. He's a co-founder. It'd be like a divorce. Who gets to keep the site?
And now I'm not sure of Arianna's innocense. She's had plenty of time to be informed. I'm sure Jonah isn't the only one to have chimed in at this point. She does have intelligent kids. And Harry Sheer and Marty Kaplan's position in all this is pretty telling too. Maybe they get special treatment compared to her other bloggers. Maybe the get paid. Maybe they own shares in the company! Maybe Love owns shares in the company! Again, we're not talking about peanuts here. They were a commercial venture from day one. They had paying advertisers on opening day. I'm sure it took a minimum of hundreds of thousands to setup the site, hire the people, get office space in Manhattan and Los Angeles, and of course, take out ads to promote the site.
rosethejet,
The advertisers definitely know about ad blockers. They research this shit day in day out. But 1% of 1,000,000 is still 10,000.
bebop
Setting up a fairly complex web site really doesn't cost that much. I know because I've done it. A techie fresh out of college probably works really cheap.
rosethejet
I have adblocking software as do most people I know. Has anyone written to JWT yet to see if they're aware that HuffPo may be rigging their stats?
DR.ROST, now I'm beginning to understand the term "truthiness." You simply set up a parallel universe where lies are facts, patriotism is treason, and knowledge is subversive. Much like a lot of talk radio, Fox News, and the right wing of the Republican Party. Unfortunately it has also invaded the Blogosphere. Years ago, when many people had at least a rudimentary knowledge of history, these concepts would have seemed unthinkable. Yet today, we accept them with a yawn. You need only look at the large number of sychophantic bloggers and many of their naive posters, coming to the defense of the duplicity being perpetrated on Huffpo.
This deception, however, didn't begin with your revelation. I noticed it months and months ago. Here is a response I wrote to a reviewer of Huffpo, which was approaching her one year anniversary:
***********************
"Hello Eric, I just read your piece/review of Arianna Huffington's Blog. I only wish your praise was warranted. I am a fairly well educated, involved, approaching seniorhood, American. I have been a supporter and fan of Mz Huffington long before her Blog premiered. I appreciated her fortitude and moxey in the face of unrelenting scorn and sarcasm. When her blog appeared, I was thrilled and became a regular visitor. My admiration and respect, unfortunately, was unrequited and I will not participate in this staged, manipulated, and dishonest forum any longer. Her "mistake" re: George Clooney was merely a glimpse into the business plan she has adopted. She is (and this is important) first and foremost a "star." Her goal is stardom, not the free flow of opinions. Of all the serious blogs that I subscribe to none even approaches Huffpo in manipulation and censorship.
When I post a serious response or query, hours, often 6 to 10, go by before being posted. When two morons, flinging gutter insults at each other post, they are printed instantly. Just today a genius described Laura Bush using the "C" word. Frank Rich was a "Jewboy." No problem. Apparently a good cat fight brings in more viewers than cognitive input. They threaten you with blackballing if you complain to their screeners and they never, ever respond to the numerous e-mails I've sent requesting a clarification of their policies. You are posted because you're known and another trophy on her belt. A while ago many, many posters complained as I'm doing now. No more. Blackballed. So praise her if you will, but to me she is a fraud and I am so very, very disapointed.
Feel free to forward this to Arianna. I'm sure her shredder is heavy duty. Be forewarned, if you question her, you too will be blackballed."
***********************
As you have recently discovered, nothing much has changed. Chalk up another win for "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
p.s. To those of you who hold out the notion(hope) that Arianna "doesn't know'"
please click your heels three times and wake up.
Wow. Great article. The end was funny to me:
http://www.reason.com/0507/co.mw.cashing.shtml
By the way Bronxzoo, if you read the article, you'll see this wasn't some ragtag operation with college grads running the ship. Kenneth Lerer is not cheap. When AOL hired him as a Exec VP, he made them buy out his consulting company. No financial disclosure, but I'm sure it wasn't peanuts.
beebop
I should have explained myself better with what I meant before. The actual cost of putting up a website, even if you maintain your own server is nominal. I was thinking that there may have been outlay for fancy consultants and all, but I bet all the founders at HuffPo got stock options in privately traded HuffPo stock rather than cash upfront.
Only a thought, but if "follow the money" works to uncover mendacity, perhaps all the HuffPo apologists have more at stake than their "good names."
Well I actually do hold out hope. Like your letter said, I've been a fan for a long time and what made it the most for me was her Shadow Convention in L.A.
It was phenomonal and the press totally ignored her and the Shadow convention. But she was on the radio as well.
Her THP was a great place to go but in the last several months the trollz, both hers and I am sure GOP paid shills have made the place intolerable.
As stated the nastiness goes up immediatly and rational debate is held off sometimes NEVER to be seen again.
IF she is in L.A. where she lives and IF the site is actually being manipulated in N.Y. then I still hold out that she hasn't a clue.
BUT what makes it possibly worse is that she may not WANT to have a clue.
Just collect the checks.
I hope Vanity Fair gets into this. I've been writing them a few times and directing them here to get what is really going on and from there I am sure they can figure out the rest.
They write the best articles and most in depth. Doc have you talked to them or inquired?
They love the High and Mighty scandals and after having just done a serious article praising here to the high heavens this might be just exactly what they are looking for.
I can hope.
Rose,
I guess you haven't been to LA. I live here. People like Arianna, by that I mean really rich people, go back and forth all the time. I would not be surprised if she had homes on both coasts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/slicing-the-big-apple_b_18354.html
And come on. Distance really isn't a factor for her not knowing. We're not talking about some store she's running on Madison Ave having issues. This is her website. She can check on it from Zimbabwe. She can always take 10 minutes and read the Dr. Blog to see what all the fuss is about. And she's got teenage daughters who I'm quite sure are aware of the existence of her website, and I'm sure she has personal friends who are more tech inclined, and also are aware she has a website. Any # of objective people would have mentioned what's up at this point. I would imagine any blogger whose only interest is maintaining a credible forum for their thought would have mentioned it to her by now. And seeing Maxpower's blog today, I don't think this is some freakish occurance. I think they just got caught red handed. Like the Cloony incident. I guess they learned from that incident that if you ignore it long enough, people forget.
bronxzoo,
I know, but they weren't running this out of Arianna's basement off her SBC DSL line. They bought office space in Los Angeles and New York City. That alone is prohibitively expensive for most people. I'm sure the founders got private shares, but I'm also sure some or all of them actually had to dish out some dough to help launch the site. My point is, she never intended her site to be some information/opinion clearinghouse for the good of the people. It was meant to be a profitable business from the get go. You don't put in hundreds of thousands unless you're planning a return of millions.
Their success isn't some fluke. Look at the people involved.
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050503glaser/
bebop
I don't disagree with you at all. Let me try to clarify again, for the extremely wealthy people involved the outlay was minimal. I think that what the lot of them is trying to protect is their stock options.
I understand that. I really do. I have been around a couple of very rich people and they are indeed very different from you and I.
I just keep hoping that she wakes up. She had a great site and if it is nothing more than all about the money, then she is a hack and nothing more.
Her daughters appear to be typical Beverly Hills girls by the way. So what they may or may not know is dependent upon just being good at the Crackberry. They aren't like John Kerry's daughters who are just amazing in their intelligence, ability, understanding and not bad on the eyes either.
So like I said, and I may be living in Oz, I just hope this is not the real her and that she has been bullshitted completley by the money and her techies.
I can hope, but I do understand the reality of a situation.
All she has to do is write the feature post on her site tomorrow. In it she says " I come before you guilty, exhausted, and ashamed. Let me tell you how this all came about. I want to tell you where I was personally, financially, and emotionally, Not to make excuses, but to try and explain. ........................................................................................................................................................(you fill it in)...
If you never click on my name on your computers again, I understand, but if you'll give me a second chance, I swear, you'll see the REAL Arianna Huffington.
Her following would triple overnite.
I got banned yet again for posting what I did on page 1 of the comments at the following blog entry (as censorship is still very much alive at Huffingtonpost.com):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/06/27/al-qaeda-jihadi-textbook_n_23892.html
bannedagain10
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