The Huffington Post is Dead

The Huffington Post was founded in 2005  by Arianna Huffington as something unique …..  a news aggregator, scanning the world’s media for stories and running those stories along side blog style commentaries from a divers collection of mostly progressive authors.  For me, the Huff became my premier source of news, balanced by Drudge.

Sadly the corporate borg was not to let that last.  Arianna Huffington sold the site to AOL, the coyote remnant of Time Warner’s disastrous effort to become a major player in the world of the internet. As a reader I wondered what this meant. Now we know.  After its purchase by AOL, The Huffington Post subsumed many of AOL’s collection of failing efforts to become a Time magazine of the web … Voices, AOL Black Voices,  AOL Latino, Gay Voices,  Women, Teen, College, Religion, and other leftish identity media,  The new HP is even hiring Kate Middleton to write a column!   .. a parallel universe to Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News! 

 All this makes sense when you realize that Verizon now owns the HuffPost!  After the sell out to AOL,  in August 2006, The Huffington Post announced that Japan’s  SoftBank Capital would invest US$5 million.  A “first round of venture capital funding” led to investments from  Alan Patricof‘s Greycroft Partners .By late 2013,  The Huffington Post was taking steps to operate as more of a “stand-alone business” within AOL, taking control of more of its own business and advertising operations, and directing more effort towards securing “premium advertising”. On June 23, 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon

The loss of Huff as an aggregator leaves me only one function site. Ironically that site is … Drudge.

Communications for $4.4 billion, which turned it into a subsidiary. 

In August 2016, Arianna Huffington stepped down from her longtime role as editor-in-chief to pursue other ventures,
and in December of that year was officially succeeded by Lydia Polgreen, formerly of The New York Times.  Now, April 2017, Polgreen announced the company would rebrand, changing its name to HuffPost and adopting format that looks like a me too of the New York Post. 

Sadly, the new editor, rather than building on the credibility arsing from Arianna’s effort to bring news together from across the globe, sees her job as as becoming more like the Murdoch.

So, the new editor is abandoning the format.  Like a Murdoch publication, Ms. Polgreen demeans facts, saying “Facts and truth are basic elements of the news. But they alone are not enough. Emotion, humor and empathy are also essential ingredients of journalism that helps you know what’s real. It’s no wonder so many people these days get their news from comedy shows.How can we serve you, our audience, better? We’re doubling down on our bold, splashy style, and serving up the news with a sense of humor, outrage and empathy. We’re also taking the suggestion of our audience across the globe and formally adopting the shorter name they’ve called us for years: HuffPost.”