Thursday, June 22, 2006

I Really Tried to Reason with HuffPo. Really.

I received a long letter from HuffPo late Tuesday evening confirming my termination, which ended with, "Again, I ask that you not print this out of respect for our professional relationship."

The next morning I decided the whole situation was ridiculous and could also hurt HuffPo, so I wrote the following:

"I've had a chance to sleep on this and what you told me. The situation is unacceptable and I would like you to reconsider your decision. Please contact me asap. I also urge you to discuss this letter with Arianna."

"I spent three months working almost full-time on writing over 60 attention grabbing blogs and received about 10% of Huffington Post's readership. I have the data. This generated significant advertising revenue for Huffington Post."

"Because I wrote an investigative article about an anonymous heckler who had been stalking my blog (who had actually challenged me to write about him), and who turned out to be the Huffington Post’s own technology manager, I was terminated. Since you deleted this blog post, then locked me out from posting, you can't really claim anything else. The Huffington Post didn't even give me a chance to inform my readers on which blog they could find me in the future. "

"Seriously, I have loved working with you, and I just have to tell you personally, since I have done marketing and crisis management for my entire live; HuffPo has made a critical, amateurish error in judgment. You really need to get professional advice."

After receiving a noncommittal response, I wrote again: "OK, I have been through too many similar situations in the past. Lesson is that companies don't change their mind and they will always try to claim the whistleblower was the one who did something wrong. HuffPo certainly has the resources to do that, so I can't be a sitting duck. Talk to Arianna, let me know in next hour what the deal is!"

And I was told, "Peter....please don't give me time limits - I'm doing my best here! I've been up since 5:30am! Don't lump us in with other companies."

Within an hour, however, I got a call back and was told that Arianna was in Cannes and couldn't be reached and there was nothing that could be done.

One of my concerns was that Huffington Post wouldn't even allow me to leave a final post, telling my HuffPo readers where they could find my new blog. So my only choice became to send out a press release. You can find it here.

But I guess I must have offended the technology gods in the universe by writing about one of them. Shortly after my press release went out, my rostpeter@hotmail.com email account was blocked, and then my internet and phone service stopped working.

Today I got the explanation when Hotmail wrote the following to me:

"Thank you for writing to MSN Hotmail Technical Support.

This is Erickson and you mentioned that your account has been locked because you sent a lot of e-mail messages. I know how important it is to regain access to your account. Please let me assist you.

We have checked your rostpeter@hotmail.com and were able to find out the cause of the problem. Your account has been closed because it is possible that an unauthorized person may have accessed your account and sent messages to your contacts."

At least my hotmail account is up and working again. On Saturday a technician will come and try to find out why my internet connection doesn't work. I hope he doesn't know that the technology gods have put a spell on me since I wrote that blog . . .

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh, right. The same woman who posted not long ago about her Blackberry addiction can't be reached. I seriously doubt that. There may be only one or two people there who can reach her that way, though; maybe the folks who made this decision don't want to talk to their bosses about it.

Anyway, good for you for keeping on them - it does no good for anyone if such a highly visible blog loses credibility.

Karen McL said...

This sounds worse than pissin off the GODs of GOLF.

But (sorry to be flip...I couldn't resist the analogy though. *smile*)

That Techno-Wizardry (or its handler) has it OUT for you. And Arianna always seems so...*reasonable* on Tee Vee.

Well, hope your press release works out and your other readership figures out where to find you (we already KNOW- of course.)

Anonymous said...

Well this just keeps getting curiouser and curioser. I've been writing to all the various liberal and progessive sites and I sure hope something comes from all of this.

I'm going to link this particular blog post to Keith and Al and a few others and see what happens.

I would encourage others to do so as well. Flood the net and see if someone blinks.

Cuz right now, it appears to be a job for the feds, not that they ever do everything right, but one does have to admit the get things right sometimes and if someone is deliberately accessing your computer, then you have a serious case against them and if it's who we think it is, then Arianna might have to cough up some serious bucks to take care of the problem.

Someone needs to go to prison as well. I think we all know who we are talking about.

Anonymous said...

Well Dr. Have you read "Arianna's" reply?

Cuz I just don't think she wrote it or if she did, then she hasn't got a clue as to what is happening at Huffpo.

The style of writing was too stilted to believe it was Arianna AND on top of that, what she did was the EXACT same thing she accuses the Bush administration of doing.

Attacking the messenger and NOT investigating the message.

Something stinks over there and I'm not buying into it at all.

I've left Huffpost for now. The place has been subverted.

Anonymous said...

How in the world would hotmail suspect that someone else was in your email account sending emails?! ... How bizarre.

And how could they possible "suspect" this before you had the chance to yourself?

Very odd. Have they provided you with details?

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Rost,

I was able to get in a post or two to your blog at Huffingtonpost.com (the one about the Rendon Group as I posted the Rolling Stone article link and the additional links about Bamford as well). Huffingtonpost.com has been banning me for making posts about Mearsheimer and Walt (and similar) like the following one:

Why aren't we discussing this Mearsheimer/Walt segment on the pro-Israel lobby which aired on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal' this morning?:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=54755

Anonymous said...

The following includes the comments page at which I posted what was mentioned above:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-rost/how-a-public-relations-fi_b_22912.html?p=2#comments

Here is a tiny URL for the above one:

http://tinyurl.com/g6jkk

http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Huffingtonpost.com just banned me again within minutes for posting the following to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/the-freedom-to-blog-on-th_b_23712.html?p=2#comments as there is incredible censorship going on there:


The following was posted in the comments section of the various blog entries by Peter Rost via http://peterrost.blogspot.com

Dear Mr. Rost,

I was able to get in a post or two to your blog at Huffingtonpost.com (the one about the Rendon Group as I posted the Rolling Stone article link and the additional links about Bamford as well). Huffingtonpost.com has been banning me for making posts about Mearsheimer and Walt (and similar) like the following one:

Why aren't we discussing this Mearsheimer/Walt segment on the pro-Israel lobby which aired on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal' this morning?:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=54755

6/24/2006


The following includes the comments page at which I posted what was mentioned above:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-rost/how-a-public-relations-fi_b_22912.html?p=2#comments

Here is a tiny URL for the above one:

http://tinyurl.com/g6jkk

http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com

By: HPcensoringtruthhere on June 24, 2006 at 03:01pm

Anonymous said...

Just noticed that Huffingtonpost.com even removed the above post from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/the-freedom-to-blog-on-th_b_23712.html?p=2#comments after I was banned for making it just minutes ago.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

They are censoring anything on Israel because, the Zionists know the jig is up thats obvious.

Israel and the Zionists can't hide or play the blame game now that they've ruined our country, via neocon intervention.

Those losers are all the same now, just like the trolls such as returnofdrevil2, Al Rogers, Nan Ellen of the Daily "KOS" propaganda press.

6/25/2006

Very much agree with the above.. My HPCensoringBigTime Username was just banned at Huffingtonpost.com for posting on pages 1 and 2 of the comments at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/06/24/excia-aide-reveals-new-d_n_23738.html about the Zionist war for Israel agenda and the Mearsheimer/Walt paper on the pro-Israel lobby segment which aired on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal' program this past Friday..

Abraham Foxman (of the ADL) was hammered hard by the caller (a lady with the Brit accent calling from London) on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal' this morning as she mentioned the USS Liberty attack/cover-up (http://www.ussliberty.org) and Paul Findley's 'There Dare to Speak Out' book and Jim Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book as well (both the Mearsheimer/Walt and Abraham Foxman segments can be viewed online via the links at the following URL):


http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Series,WJE&ArchiveDays=30

Here is the tiny URL for the above one:

http://tinyurl.com/dl5na

Additional at following URLs about how MSNBC's Keith Olbermann dissed the Mearsheimer/Walt paper:

MSNBC's Olbermann Disses Mearsheimer and Walt Critique:

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=412

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/stopcollection.htm#james_morris

http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

I got banned again minutes after posting the following at Huffingtonpost.com via http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/06/25/dem-senator-now-it-tur_n_23773.html and other blog entries there (incredible censorship still going on as mentioned prior):



JINSA/PNAC Neocon Richard Perle: Why Did Bush Blink on Iran?:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=54827

http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com