"Why Arianna Huffington is leaving the Huffington Post" by Drew Harwell August 11
Arianna Huffington, the former conservative commentator who co-founded and built the Huffington Post into one of the Web’s most prominent liberal media giants, said Thursday she will step down to focus on a new health-and-wellness start-up.
Saying on Twitter she thought “HuffPost would be my last act,” Huffington, 66, said she would instead focus on new venture, Thrive Global, a yet-to-launch start-up focused on “ending the collective delusion that burnout is a necessary price for success.”
So that is what it all was.
After co-founding the site in 2005, Huffington’s news giant quickly became one of America’s most-visited websites and led a new wave of opinion blogging, news aggregation and journalism crafted entirely for the Web. Her co-founders, Kenneth Lerer and Jonah Peretti, would later go on to spearhead the viral sensation Buzzed.
I've rarely read any of their stuff, and it isn't a destination on my side roll. I basically viewed it as BS site, and let me tell you, there were forerunners of her Janie-come-lately pos site.
What's sad is I was right on her heels with this pos that I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would still be here pounding away.
A left-leaning counterpoint to conservative news aggregators like the Drudge Report, “HuffPo,” as many called it, routinely repackaged stories and borrowed liberally from other news outlets, sparking tensions among traditional media but also creating a traffic-chasing model that has persisted and expanded today.
Which is what I do to show you what my flag$hit puts out on a regular basis, but this left-leaning counterpoint that was needed is the false front put forth by the corporate pre$$ because it was at about this time that people stopped believing them. The Iraq lies were undoing the whole thing, and after the last decade no one believes them.
“In a way, it’s a golden age for consumers,” she said in 2010. “The Huffington Post is committed to the link economy.”
Ah! I'm part of it, and now I know why I'm running strong. I wonder how many people I'm sending to the Globe that otherwise wouldn't! With the whole indu$try hurting for revenue and clicks.... ha-ha-ha.
Of course, the golden age is filled with a sewer full of disinformation and deception so it is up to you to figure out what you believe based on your own research. I can guide you with comments and spend hours finding links -- but maybe I'll save that for the next post (or the last one).
The site has since vastly expanded its staff across 14 countries devoted to original reporting, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for a series on wounded veterans and their families. It is the 156th most-visited website on the planet, Alexa data show, though its popularity has slipped.
That's interesting because mine is spiking and I don't know why. I know it's Google stats and all, but I've had a pretty consistent and relatively low-level of daily visitors. That's fine. So I'm not one of the "big boys," so what? That's not why I started this. I started this as a service to the reader and, well, you know....
Many Huffington Post writers and contributors are unpaid, and Huffington has argued that their visibility on a routinely viral news site is payment enough. Hundreds of staffers at the site last year voted to create a union.
A union! You don't need one of those.
Of course, how do you eat visibility?
Huffington stayed in leadership after AOL bought the site in 2011 for a landmark $315 million.
Oh. She get a big payout or something? That's why she moving on to health and wellne$$?
But rumors swirled about her role after AOL was sold to Verizon last year for $4.4 billion. Huffington actively pursued other projects, including heavy promotion of her new book, “The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time.”
You would think it Xma$ in July!
Verizon just bend a union over?
Speaking of sleeping....
In June, Huffington announced she was working on a new start-up but said her “primary focus” would remain her namesake site. But in a statement Thursday, she acknowledged she “simply couldn’t do justice to both companies” as Thrive Global’s prospects evolved.
Verizon last month also announced it would buy Yahoo, whose online news business closely parallels The Huffington Post’s. AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong said in a statement Thursday that “AOL and Verizon are committed to continuing (the Huffington Post’s) growth and the groundbreaking work Arianna pioneered.”
Huffington’s leadership has been called into question in recent months due to worries over her decision-making and focus on side ventures. In April, she was named to the board of directors for Uber, a potential conflict of interest given she was the top editorial executive for a site involved in covering Uber news. Soon after, the site rebuffed a story pitch that was critical of Uber.
The newsroom’s growing focus on sleep-related stories in line with Huffington’s new book also struck many as odd. Staffers there suggested Washington Post media columnist Erik Wemple “examine whether the finite editorial resources of the Huffington Post are being imprudently plowed into book promotion for the editor-in-chief.”
Not really.
Thrive Global, which launches in November, was described as “a corporate and consumer wellbeing and productivity platform” that would provide training, seminars and “e-courses” on “neuroscience, psychology, productivity, sports and sleep.”
Do corporate and consumer even go together anymore, what with the crap and poisonous products and all? Or is the almighty buck first?
Good thing we got a Huffiest looking out for us.
First cast into the public spotlight in the 1990s during the failed Senate bid of her now ex-husband, Michael Huffington, the Greece-born Huffington has become one of the most powerful women in media and a multi-millionaire in her own right. A syndicated columnist, she has also written 15 books on politics, spirituality and self-help.
Oh, she is part of that cla$$. Had they truly meant so well for us all the world wouldn't be in the shape it is in. So sick of people telling me they like some media personality because, well, they saw the image and illusion of them that the media hath presented!
Yeah, I felt sorry for her back then because he came out as gay, and that was when I first started thinking of wanting rich guys over bought and paid-for career politicians. They are not as controllable. And now we have Trump.
Huffington’s exit, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes amid some of the most heated days of the presidential campaign, during which the site has been an outspoken opponent of Republican candidate Donald Trump. Last summer, coverage of Trump was filed not under politics, but entertainment. Since December, all stories regarding Trump have included editors’ notes branding him a “serial liar,” “misogynist” and “racist.”
I'm not even going to argue it anymore, only to say that the obsessive ma$$ media focus on every syllable that guy says while laying endless amounts of vitriol on the guy counts for something. For all those people who think it's a big rigged game no matter who wins, well, the people that will be pulling the strings don't think so. They are taking it damn serious. Doesn't the stone-throwing tell you something?
That is not to be construed as a vote, endorsement, or support of the guy, or the lack thereof. It is a simple recognition of what this outside observer who has stepped back from it all sees. You can't not see it unless you are in fact blind.
Huffington Post reporters said the news came as a surprise to the newsroom, with some senior managers learning only of the decision Wednesday night. Many others learned of the departure from Thursday-morning memos from Huffington, who was most recently editor-in-chief.
“To everyone at HuffPost: it’s you who make HuffPost what it is,” Huffington tweeted Thursday morning. “I’m filled with gratitude to all the colleagues and friends I’ve made here.”
Now all you 9/11 inside job conspiracy folks get outta here!
That's why I never took her sight seriously. Her controlled opposition front won me over earlier when she was chiding Cheney and Bush about Iraq and torture, but after that....
--more--"
Well, I just gave the WaPo a cha-china.
Feel like I need to go wash.
"Arianna Huffington is leaving The Huffington Post" by Joseph Pisani and Tali Arbel Associated Press August 11, 2016 --more--"
That's not what was in my printed paper, and as for the web version I didn't see it, did you?
