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Arianna Huffington Comes Out On Top In AOL-Huffington Post Merger

David McAlpine |
February 7, 2011 | 9:57 p.m. PST

Executive Producer

Arianna Huffington (Photo credit, Creative Commons).
Arianna Huffington (Photo credit, Creative Commons).

Arianna Huffington founded The Huffington Post almost six years ago, when the idea of online news was still in the developing stages, let alone the idea of aggregating that content. Over the course of its tenure, Huffington has attracted a pseudo-staff of more than 3,000 bloggers, getting more than 20 million unique views and more than 1 million comments a month.

Now, even though AOL is acquiring the site, often called "HuffPo," Arianna may be the one who is coming out on top. With the sale of her site comes a new title: editor-in-chief of AOL's news content. Everything under AOL's recently-growing portfolio, Engadget, TechCrunch and Patch included, is now under her control, including, still, The Huffington Post.

Some media experts say the move showed how valuable Huffington's image is.

"It's smart, and bold, to put Arianna in charge of AOL's editorial content," Felix Salmon of Reuters said. since she is one of the precious few people who ahs managed to create a mass-market general-interest online publication which isn't bland and which has an instantly indentifiable personality."

Others say it's not just the website, but also Huffington's hands-on experience in the rise of news aggregation brings AOL a new life that it needs to survive.

"Content alone isn't enough for AOL," Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine said. "It has content. Lots. What HuffPo and Arianna bring is a new cultural understanding of media that is built around the value of curation, the power of peers, the link economy, passion as an asset, and celebrity as a currency."

Then there's the matter of the estimated $100 million cut that Huffington herself is getting (in cash, not AOL stock), when the aformentioned 3,000 plus bloggers have been largely writing for the site for free.

Case in point: Mayhill Fowler, a so-called "citizen journalist," who first reported about President Obama's 2008 pre-election "guns and religion" blunder and former President Clinton's views on a Vanity Fair feature writer. They were called major scoops by media outlets across the nation. But to Fowler, it was work that went unappreciated and unpaid, so she left.

The site has always been praised or panned for separating itself from the other media giants of MSNBC, CNN and News Corporation writing on the edgier side of major political and news events. Now, as the newest member of the AOL Media family, some media members question if Arianna's site will still carry the same reputation.

However, it's been almost a year in the making, according to some media insiders, which means Huffington put some heavy thought into the merger.

And though the status of The Huffington Post has yet to be seen, other members of the media think the online news mogul is selling out on her original mission.

"I'm disappointed in the Huffington Post," Nick Denton of Gawker said. "I thought Arianna Huffington and Kenny Lere were reinventing news, rather than simply flipping to a flailing conglomerate."

To reach executive producer David McAlpine, click here.

To follow him on Twitter: @DavidMcAlpine

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