Case in point: Alexia Tsotsis, a writer for TechCrunch, recently wrote a story about how the film “The Source Code” was trying to market itself to techie types at SXSW, despite having little to do with anything technology-related. (This was her angle after interviewing two of the film’s stars and seeing the film as a guest of Summit Entertainment.) Apparently Summit didn’t like her takeaway of the film, and passed along a message to Moviefone (which, along with TechCrunch, is owned by AOL) that Alexia needed to “tone down” her attitude. Instead of defending a journalist’s right to a negative review (because remember, bloggers are P.R. copy-spitting machines, not real journos), the reps for the sister site passed along the message, telling Alexia to change her piece so it was less “snarky.”

Snarky, by the way, is just the catchall term for how bloggers write, and has become something of an empty phrase fitting under the umbrella of any sort of criticism of a subject. Here was the letter Alexia received from an AOL TV/Moviefone representative :

Hope you’re having a good time at SxSW and that it’s not been too crazy busy for you!

First wanted to thank you for covering Source Code/attending the party, etc. But also wanted to raise a concern that Summit had about the piece that ran. They felt it was a little snarky and wondered if any of the snark can be toned down? I wasn’t able to view the video interviews but I think their issue is just with some of the text. Let me know if you’re able to take another look at it and make any edits. I know of course that TechCrunch has its own voice and editorial standards, so if you have good reasons not to change anything that’s fine, I just need to get back to Summit with some sort of information. Let me know.

Thanks!

How did we get the letter? Easy: Alexia posted it, along with her rebuttal as to why it was unethical for her to change her opinion of a film just because she saw it with a press pass. After taking a swipe at Summit’s marketing strategy (“Summit thought that by inviting me to their party they were basically buying a puff piece,” ) she homed in on her real target: AOL.

The issue is simply that Summit thinks it can pressure us, through an AOL sister site, into making a balanced report more glowing. And while it’s inappropriate, it’s not surprising. What is surprising, and sad, is that Moviefone/AOL actually tried to comply with their request and asked us to change our post. It’s not just sad, it’s wrong.

So no AOL, and Moviefone, and Summit, I will absolutely not tone down my snark. This is Silicon Valley, not Hollywood.

With all the scrutiny AOL is under right now, having one of its own bloggers give such a withering commentary on company policy cannot have made those in charge very happy. And in AOL’s defense, this seems like it was an issue between two sites inside the company (Moviefone and TechCrunch) and not a demand from corporate. Still, it’s a ballsy move on Alexia’s part to call out her employer.

One of my favorite chatters says he is 80. He is crusty, and his political views are diametrically opposed to mine. I look forward to hearing his take on an event or policy. He’s a wordsmith. I find his “from a bygone era English teacher” grammatical style enchanting.

Of course there are also the bad days. The days the “trolls” invade. These are the chatters who can only express their divergent views in expletives and insults.

Then there are the “parkers” who come into the room but say nothing. By parking they prevent other chatters from entering. Some of these computer-savvy users have multiple screen names, so they can park on more than one of the “chairs.”

One particularly savvy visitor who claimed he once worked for AOL had as many as 21 aliases. After parking for months on end, he virtually destroyed the room. Many regular chatters stopped visiting. The invader often occupied one of his screen names and would abuse and attack longtime visitors who managed to get into the chat. AOL was advised repeatedly, and finally he was expelled from the room. But some of our number still have not returned.

And of course there’s tiresome infighting. The rumors, the gossip, the alleged affairs; the chatters who instant message or e-mail while in the room, creating side chats and cross conversations; the misidentifying of fellow chatters, assuming one is actually someone else and accusing them of doing or saying something another chatter did. Three users have been dubbed the “mean old ladies.” I don’t know if they’re ladies or old, but they’re certainly mean. After one verbally attacks a chatter outside of the vitriolic trio, the other two come in for the kill. Like bullies everywhere, they tend to prey on the more vulnerable chatters.

Abbreviations and code words are used to confuse those outside the inner circle. One chatter I will call Muffin, Muf for short, says she lives in a trailer somewhere in the South. She tells us when the trailer pipes freeze, when the owner raises the rent, when she is ill, when her husband gets drunk, when her children or grandchildren run into trouble. The gossip of the group is that Muf is on welfare of some kind. She greets everyone warmly, and is often attacked by those who seek out the vulnerable.

Once, she and Mr. Muf went someplace special. She wore a blue velvet pantsuit she bought in the ’70s. She said she scrubbed up and that she must have looked OK because Mr. Muf was not ashamed to be seen with her. For some reason that made me cry. For all I know “she” is a 50-year-old man scratching his belly in Arizona, but the life story she tells is poignant.

Most of us rejoiced when Blue gave up smoking. Most of us recoiled when antiwar Cloud said unrepeatable things about the military officer son of another chatter. The soldier died in battle in Afghanistan. Most put Cloud on “ignore” the moment he ventures into the room. And so the room expresses disapproval and disciplines those who venture in and misstep.

Newcomers are treated with caution until a regular vouches for them. Or until they prove themselves. Jokes and different chats occur, there is the “gun chat,” the “menopause chat” the “we are the girls chat,” the “we are the boys chat,” the “sex chat,” the “recipe chat” and so on. At times different groupings will try to meet in person, with varying degrees of success.

From cities and rural areas, from trailers and homes, from different corners of this country and even around the world, abled and disabled, employed and unemployed, Republican, Libertarian and Democrat, graduate degreed and high school escapee we join on our computer screens and chat. Understanding that everyone in the room is only who they say they are, that the many AOL users are millionaires only in their imaginations, our group is coherent, cohesive and, well, just plain fun.

There is no one I’d rather spend a State of the Union address or an inauguration with than this diverse group. I won’t be giving it up any time soon. As for my family? They’ve adjusted. 

Along the way, she has been proven she can be both charming and antagonizing — sometimes all within a few minutes of conversation punctuated in her distinctive Greek accent.

“She is a force of nature. It can really be something to watch her in action,” said Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor who has gotten to know Huffington while writing a blog about online media. “She is one of those people who will tell you, ‘We simply must do this’ and will persuade you to do it. She believes she can change the world.”

Huffington, 60, could have her biggest pulpit yet at AOL Inc. It’s paying $315 million to buy her news and opinion site, the Huffington Post, and anointing her as its next best hope to orchestrate a long-awaited turnaround at an Internet company that lost its way a decade ago.

After the deal closes this spring, Huffington will oversee most of AOL’s content as the company tries to attract more people and sell more ads. The inventory includes technology sites Endgadget and TechCrunch, Patch.com’s network of suburban news sites and online mapping service Mapquest. Combined with the Huffington Post, the sites will have a total audience approaching 300 million people worldwide.

“I think that we have an incredible opportunity to tell the stories of our times, at the national level, at the local level and increasingly at the international level,” Huffington told The Associated Press during a Monday interview.

Huffington’s charisma and the high hopes riding on her were on display when she swung by AOL’s New York offices Monday to introduce herself to about 300 employees. They greeted her with a standing ovation, according to Howard Fineman, a Huffington Post employee who accompanied his boss.

“She’s the one who had them in the palm of her hand, explaining the mission and telling jokes,” said Fineman, who first met Huffington in 1994 while he was at Newsweek magazine writing a story about her. “She’s a star.”

Although she was already well-known as author and commentator with frequent appearances on TV and radio, Huffington didn’t become a really hot commodity until she started the Huffington Post in 2005 with former AOL executive Kenneth Lerer. Backed by just $1 million from her initial investors, Huffington thought there was a place for a site featuring the opinions of her celebrity pals, who would write for free.

The concept was initially ridiculed, but it struck a chord and became more popular as it started to repackage and comment on the top stories from other sites.

By the time AOL came courting, Huffington Post had more than 6,000 unpaid bloggers and a payroll of 210 people who occasionally score their own scoops. It ranks among the Internet’s top 10 destinations for cultural and global news with an average of 25 million visitors per month.

The site’s success stamped Huffington as the 28th most powerful woman in the world in an October 2010 list compiled by Forbes magazine. She ranked right behind Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates’ wife, Melinda, who just contributed a piece about vaccines to Huffington Post last month. (First Lady Michelle Obama topped that Forbes list).

Long before she became a mover and shaker in her own right, Huffington had developed a knack for finding her way into influential circles. When she married Texas oil scion Michael Huffington in 1987, philanthropist Ann Getty footed the bill, television news personality Barbara Walters was a bridesmaid and the guest list included former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. When her 2006 book “On Becoming Fearless” came out in 2006, Silicon Valley billionaire Larry Ellison hosted a reception in his San Francisco home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

“The Internet was invented for Arianna Huffington,” Fineman said. “Finally a medium was created for her and allows her to fully be what she was destined to be, which is a global networker.”

Most of Huffington’s 13 books are about political and social topics. One exception was a biography about Pablo Picasso that stands as testament to her love of art. When she invited a few reporters to join her for a dinner party with music and movie executive David Geffen at her Los Angeles-area home a few years ago, Huffington proudly pointed out a painting the she said was done by Picasso’s mistress.

Huffington was born in Athens in 1950 as Arianna Stassinopoulos. After her parents broke up while she was a teenager, she moved to England. She eventually enrolled at Cambridge University, where she would hone her verbal sparring skills as president of the Cambridge Union Society, a debating club dating back to 1815. She would also get a master’s degree in economics.

After college, she developed a fascination with self-help philosophies that are said to still influence her today. She once was friendly with Werner Erhard, the founder of the self-help program “est,” in the 1970s and later became a minister of in the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness founded by a man who would become known as “John-Roger.” That connection came back to haunt her after published stories aired allegations of sexual and financial abuse against John-Roger.

Huffington embraced the conservative views of her husband, Michael, who was elected as a California congressman representing the Santa Barbara area in 1992. He then mounted a 1994 bid for a Senate seat against Dianne Feinstein. Arianna campaigned hard for her husband, but Michael Huffington lost, even after spending $28 million of his own fortune.

After that setback, Arianna Huffington remained a staunch Republican who backed then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Her politics began to lean to the left following her 1997 divorce from Michael Huffington, who later made even more news by revealing he was bisexual. The Huffingtons have two daughters, Christina, now 21, and Isabella, 19. They both attend Yale University.

Tony Blankley, Gringrich’s former press secretary, has had an up-close view of Arianna Huffington’s political evolution as the co-host of a National Public Radio Show called “Left, Right & Center,” He now fills the conservative role that Arianna once played on the weekly program. The two remain good friends, largely because Blankley can’t resist Arianna’s flair.

“When you start looking for someone who’s got her set of mind and personality, it’s just real hard to find, left, right or center,” Blankley says.

——

AP Technology Writer Jessica Mintz in Seattle, AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz in San Francisco and AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima contributed to this report.

The Huffington Post ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites and draws 25 million U.S. visitors each month. It has built its popularity by compiling news from a wide selection of other media outlets, with links to articles and video on everything from politics to style to food. The site combines that type of aggregation with original work by its own small staff and blog posts from celebrity contributors who work for free in return for a platform to express their opinions. Bill Gates has written for Huffington Post, along with President Barack Obama, Robert Redford and several university presidents.

But just as important as gaining the site itself, the deal adds Huffington Post co-founder and media star Arianna Huffington to AOL’s management team. Once the deal closes later this year, Huffington will run AOL’s growing array of content, which includes popular technology sites Engadget and TechCrunch, local news site Patch.com and online mapping service MapQuest.

Although some analysts say that AOL is paying a lot for the Huffington Post brand, Benchmark Co. analyst Clayton Moran believes the price isn’t a huge hit for the company in the short term, especially since it helps put to rest any question that AOL is now an online media company. Bringing Huffington Post to AOL gives it access to quality content and will drive new users to its site, replacing those the company has lost over time, he said. And the price is essentially “the hiring fee to get Arianna,” technology analyst Rob Enderle says. Although he described the purchase as an “out-of-left-field” decision, he thinks the move “could put AOL back on the map.”

Huffington Post grew quickly from startup to online colossus. Over time, it launched city-specific pages and developed a roster of sections such as food and books. The work of its 70-person paid staff is augmented by content from news outlets and 6,000 bloggers who write for free. Outsell Inc. analyst Ned May said the Huffington Post “has done a fantastic job of building content creation. And AOL can monetize it.”

AOL sorely needs to. The company rose to fame in the ’90s with its dial-up Internet service, managing to buy media company Time Warner Inc. in 2001 at the height of the dot-com boom. The corporate marriage never really worked, though, and AOL’s main source of revenue began drying up as consumers flocked to speedier broadband Internet connections. After nearly a decade of attempts at integrating the two, Armstrong was brought in to prepare AOL to separate from Time Warner, and the companies split in Dec. 2009.

Although analysts say AOL’s decision to buy Huffington Post is sound, Enderle warned that putting Arianna Huffington into a position of power could eventually threaten Armstrong’s job security if AOL still struggles.

Gartner analyst Andrew Frank added that the deal is risky in the sense that media acquisitions are inherently risky these days.

“There is a lot of effort ahead for online media to recapture the glory days when media was booming business,” he said. “Deals like this offer hope. On the other hand you can’t really dismiss the somewhat uneven record AOL has had with acquisitions.”

Beyond Time Warner, another of AOL’s well-known failed acquisitions was social network Bebo, which AOL bought in 2008 for $850 million and then unloaded two years later to Criterion Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount thought to be a fraction of what it paid.

Regardless, both parties clearly feel optimistic about this deal. In a blog post, Arianna Huffington praised Armstrong’s vision for AOL and said they were on the same page as they discussed their ambitions for online news. “We were practically finishing each other’s sentences,” Huffington wrote. She said the deal was signed at the Super Bowl in Dallas, which she and Armstrong attended.

In an interview Monday, Armstrong said the deal is a “tremendous opportunity” for AOL that brings an influential audience that is attractive to advertisers. The site’s visitors and many of its contributors include business leaders, doctors and university presidents, he said.

“Last year was about the turnaround; this year is about the comeback,” he said.

Armstrong has been trying to turn AOL into a go-to place for a wide variety of news since he was hired to revamp the company in April 2009 while it was still a part of Time Warner. The makeover is designed to give people a reason to visit AOL’s websites more frequently to help boost ad sales. AOL had just a 5.3 percent share of the U.S. display advertising revenue in 2010, down from 6.8 percent in 2009, according to eMarketer. Facebook, meanwhile, accounted for 13.6 percent of display revenue last year, up from 7.3 percent in 2009.

Armstrong also has reduced payroll by thousands of employees through layoffs and buyouts to try to boost AOL’s financial performance and stock price. It has been a slog so far. AOL lost more than $780 million last year, largely because of accounting charges, and the company’s stock is now worth slightly less than after it was spun off from Time Warner Inc. 14 months ago.

Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and other investors. They will get $300 million of the purchase price in cash. The remaining $15 million will be paid in AOL stock.

On a conference call with analysts, AOL Chief Financial Officer Arthur Minson said the company expects Huffington Post will generate $50 million in revenue this year, with a profit margin of 30 percent. By comparison, AOL drew $2.42 billion in revenue last year. About 53 percent came from ads, and most of the rest from its dwindling base of dial-up Internet subscribers. Minson said the deal will save AOL $20 million a year by allowing it to eliminate operations that overlap with Huffington Post.

If it wins regulatory approval as expected, the transaction would likely close in late March or early April.

Shares of AOL, which is based in New York, fell 75 cents, or 3.4 percent, to close Monday at $21.19.

—-

AP Business Writer Andrew Vanacore in New York and Technology Writers Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.

People think of Huffington Post as the leading popular liberal-Democratic news site. Huffington is now at least suggesting that the progressive point of view isn’t a part of what she’ll be pursuing at AOL. “Ms. Huffington said her politics would have no bearing on how she ran the new business,” says the New York Times story. Really? This strikes me as strange, disingenuous, and about as credible as Roger Ailes claiming that Fox is not a partisan-driven institution.

One possibility is, Huffington is just saying what the corporate script requires and actually the plan is to position AOL as a sort of Democratic alternative to Fox News/Drudge — which I think would be a really interesting move. I have to assume Arianna has big TV ambitions; I have yet to meet a new-media empire builder who didn’t secretly yearn to do an Ailes (or an Oprah).

The other, more likely possibility is that this whole thing is about the money, the investors needed to cash out, HuffPo’s numbers weren’t looking good enough for an IPO, and Huffington is basically improvising. She’ll spend a couple years at AOL and then move on. This means that, in 2011, Huffington Post will be playing the same role in relation to AOL that AOL played in relation to Time Warner back in 2000: selling itself at the top of a market bubble, pocketing the profit from a sale that couldn’t be earned from customers, and leaving a bigger, older company with all the headaches.

I was one of the few outspoken skeptics of Time Warner/AOL back in 2000. This time around there are more — see Om Malik, who looks at some numbers; Dan Lyons, who’s funny; and Ken Auletta, who views the deal as AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s “hail Mary pass.”

Having all this company in doubt gives me a little pause. Maybe Huffington and Armstrong will prove a great team: The queen of low-cost SEO-driven content paired with the guy who built the Google ad machine that made SEO-driven content pay. But I still think this union is unlikely to end well. AOL remains a generic blandness factory when it comes to journalism. Huffington’s brand could change that; far more likely, it will just dissolve into the corporate miasma.