AOL is buying the Huffington Post

[charlie]

And Arriana will oversee all of AOL's editorial content.

Floundering, shrinking, zombie AOL. Smells like doom to me.

The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.

The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and were expected to announce the deal Monday morning. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.

The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation, areas that its chief executive, Tim Armstrong, views as vital to reversing a decade-long decline.

Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html

[Historic NY]

1. Great its all downhill.....unless AOL fixes all its glitchs & embedded links

[Horse with no Name]

2. Oh great, I guess this means that some RW org is going to buy AOL

and put HuffPo out of business.

Sounds par for the course.

[grahamhgreen]

8. You mean Time-Warner?

[zaj]

15. Spun off AOL in 2009.

[LiberalFighter]

3. AOL sucks. Always has.

[sharesunited]

4. Cha-Ching Arianna!

[cherokeeprogressive]

5. She's one smart woman.

Take the money and run, Ariana.

[krawhitham]

10. Yep, she used us well

[Fuzz]

7. Exactly

[azul]

6. Qualified yay

If Puffington Host is given a fair deal and a real opportunity to deliver actual news, it may turn out a happening thing.

[zaj]

9. Did no one read the quote?

"Arianna Huffington, ... will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content... The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone"

It's as if Huffington Post took over AOL. Not the other way around.

[snot]

11. Sorry, but no. AOL writes her paycheck, not the other way around.

And even if she has a contract . . . cf. Olbermann.

[krawhitham]

12. They bought HuffPo and can fire her at any time

AOL is very RW, she will get canned in under 6 months

[zaj]

14. AOL was spun off by Time-Warner in 2009...

"On December 9, 2009, Time Warner Inc. completed the spin-off of AOL Inc."

[JDPriestly]

18. For how long?

Wait until some even bigger animal buys out AOL and fires Arianna. The deal is naive -- unless Arianna is planning to retire in a few years. As for us, some creative person will come along and outdo Huffington Post.

[Bombero1956]

13. why oh why

do people start a website to fight against the evils of corporate America and then turn around and sell that site to the very people they are fighting against. I feel like the kid who gets promised a nice toy and gets socks and underwear instead.

[RandomThoughts]

16. They were always part of the system

subtle is part of it. she is part of the system. Is she publishing the non stop crimes of corruption and skimming? Or expert pictures with visual subtext.

and she probably has beer and travel money.

I do like her advocacy on many topics.

[Statistical]

27. Simple Answer.

$.

It is easy to say "I will never sellout" when nobody is offering your real money. I think the deal valued the HP at $315 million.

Most (I would say almost all) sell out for tens of millions of dollars. Most of the people who claim otherwise have never been in that situation and honestly have no real idea on how they would react.

[blogslut]

17. She's partnered with AOL practically the entire life of Huffington Post

It's no surprise the two would merge eventually.

[EFerrari]

19. Greg Mitchell had all of his Wikileaks blog readers go check out the front page

at HuffPo tonight.

It looked like a mass of those vibrating "YOU WON" ads. lol

[blogslut]

20. I'll take your word for it

I've been avoiding that site for years - the scripts and effluvia there drive me nuts. I used to be a big HuffPo participant back in the early days but became disillusioned with their business model.

It's all kind of funny really. Initially, HuffPo depended on AOL to feed them traffic and now the roles have reversed.

[madmax]

21. Meh, Screw Arriana

She ain't no Joan of Arc. The country will survive and so will we. There are plenty of other left wing and progressive blogs, message boards, and websites.

Good luck biatch. Enjoy the $$.

[Webster Green]

22. AOL is still around?

:rofl:

[DonCoquixote]

23. Never, ever forget

Long before she was a "left winger", Arianna was the aggressive mean right winger. Let's also face facts, the Huffpost did allow some lefty people in, but they were often mouthpieces for centre-right scum like Mark Penn, who would usually say the umpteenth version of "obama must go to the center to win, don't you wish you voted Hillary!"

Also, if Miss H thinks she will be in control, she is sadly mistaken. AoL has never been one to let practical concerns get in the way of incompetence, and I say this as an ex employee that got his job outsourced to India. She will just have to be content sipping drinks with Ted Turner.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

26. Interesting ! I remember, long ago, several times, trying to

get up and running on AOL and it never worked right.

[progressoid]

24. Huffington Post? Oh yeah, that's where I go to see pictures of Kim Kardashian.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

25. lol....funny thing is, by her adding all the celebrity gossip - she

grew market share and value.

Whoever can come up with the ultimate one stop website - with it all - sports, entertainment and hard news and commentary will win