AOL To Buy The Huffington Post
Old media company AOL will buy the Huffington Post. The deal was announced last night. AOL is better known for messing up Time Warner and for making money for charging confused older people for email they can get for free on the Internet.
AOL Inc. [NYSE:AOL] announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.
The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age – leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.
The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.
As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.
What do you think? This sounds like a terrible fit to me but perhaps it could work. I wonder if the HuffPo will continue to run all the science quackery and anti-vax articles they’ve become known for?
Tags: AOL, Huffington Post, Media
“……with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience…” of only liberals with the time and interest to use multiple news sources. Also will interest the 24 people left in the world who use AOL.
This is like a dinosaur partnering with…. the huffington post.
it is also hilarious that “HoffPost Divorce” is one of the new features they proudly display on the headline.
Basically, when “Kim Kardashian Nip Slip” stops being a headline, i’ll start taking them seriously.
I didn’t know there was a HuffPo divorce website, but I’m not surprised.
What’s both ironic and fascinating at the same time is how Arianna Huffington created her HuffPost much like Mark Zuckerberg created FaceBook – via shameful intellectual property theft and other unethical business practices.
See Link Here.
Huffington, in her own words, while defending herself in a lawsuit regarding the creators of ‘her’ website, exclaims: “My idea differed from the plaintiffs’ in that I wanted to create a website where Progressive ideology and voices would be heard…I would use my contacts from Hollywood and political circles to advance this cause on the Internet…”
Talk about revealing one’s journalistic motive. It is one thing to have a bias or ideology in one’s reporting; it is a whole other thing to express such during deposition in a lawsuit.
The other ‘irony’ is that Arianna used Andrew Breitbart (then Matt Drudge’s main idea person for the Drudge Report ) to help launch the HuffPost and how her ‘partner,’ Kenneth Lerner, was a then AOL executive.
Huffington is nothing more than a chameleon. She’s reinvented herself on numerous occassions over the course of her career (was once a Republican, ran, and failed for a political office, tried the Al Gore ‘Green’ thing railing against gas guzzling SUVs and now wants to push Progressivism ‘by any means necessary’).
She’s no better than Christine O’Donnell when it comes to seeking fame and fortune, except Huff is a little more educated than COD. Her deep accent also keeps her from being offered a job as an analyst or contributor on MSNBC.
The HuffPost has no real journalistic integrity. It uses sensationalism to drive web traffic. Just look at their size-40-font they use for basic headlines. I can see using size-40 font if the Afghanistan war ended, or if an assasination attempt occured or Obama decided to NOT RUN for reelection…but for every story?
How much is DelawareOnline/News-Journal offering for DelawareLiberal?
I’m in high level talks. Gannett is claiming that an Olive Garden gift card for $25.00 and a free hot dog at a Blue Rocks game is their final offer, but I think I can get them to throw in a car wash.