Salon.com > Huffington Post http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 13:20:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The Breitbart media http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_breitbart_media/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_breitbart_media/#comments Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12472371 Andrew Breitbart's fingerprints are all over the majority of the partisan political Internet. The Blaze, the Daily Caller, Huffington Post, even Politico: They'd all look quite different without his influence. There was already Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes and Matt Drudge himself, but Breitbart was a phenomenon of the Internet age, and would not have thrived before the Web helped to destabilize the traditional press.

He intuitively understood how the media work even if he needed to invent a grand conspiracy to explain the motivations of its primary actors. He knew that if the press felt it had missed a major story from an unexpected source, it would quickly rush to be the first to publicize further material from that source in the future. He learned this from Matt Drudge, who really did become the de facto "assignment editor" of the political press following his publication of Michael Isikoff's axed Lewinsky story. The parallel right-wing press has been in existence for years, and the early conservative blogosphere organized itself around blogs from people like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, but Breitbart was an expert in forcing their obsessions into the "mainstream."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_breitbart_media/feed/ 75 Vaccines still safe, non-celebrities with medical expertise report http://www.salon.com/2011/08/25/vaccines_safe/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/25/vaccines_safe/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/08/25/vaccines_safe Oliver Willis brings word of yet another panel of scientists announcing that there is no link whatsoever between the M.M.R. vaccine and autism. “The M.M.R. vaccine doesn’t cause autism, and the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t,” said Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, who knows what she's talking about despite not being a celebrity.

Now for the bad news: At some point the Huffington Post's gloriously deranged "Living" section was replaced by "Aol Health Living." It still has Deepak Chopra, but there seems, upon a cursory perusal, to be a lot less "integrative medicine" and all-natural holistic cure-alls peddled by Hollywood quacks. It looks like anti-vaccine nut Jenny McCarthy last contributed to the HuffPo way back in January.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/25/vaccines_safe/feed/ 56 Arianna Huffington v. Frederick Douglass http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/arianna_huffington_vs_frederick_douglass/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/arianna_huffington_vs_frederick_douglass/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:19:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh//politics/2011/07/18/arianna_huffington_vs_frederick_douglass The White House released video of a formerly private meeting President Obama held with a group of college students in Boston last March, where he discussed the importance of political compromise. Some of the students were active in college Democrats and Republicans groups, others were independents, and the talk is widely being seen as emblematic of the president's conciliating world view – and how he disappoints the unrealistic left, and is proud to do so. I wouldn't pay much attention to it if it was just a normal four-minute daily news item, which flow on all day, every day. But since the White House seems to think it's politically useful, it's worth taking seriously.

The big headline from the president's little talk is that he bashed the Huffington Post – twice! First, he told the college Republicans in attendance that he knows they consider him a liberal president, while "if you read the Huffington Post, you'd think I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can't be true." But I was much more interested in Obama's later comments about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, because he captures a complexity that's often missed by people on the left – but he misses some complexity, too.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/arianna_huffington_vs_frederick_douglass/feed/ 139 Now that’s how you give a graduation speech http://www.salon.com/2011/05/25/best_graduation_speech_alaine_caudle/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/25/best_graduation_speech_alaine_caudle/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 18:26:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/05/25/best_graduation_speech_alaine_caudle  Alaine Caudle of Doniphan West High School knew that nobody remembers his or her high school valedictorian (or their college one, for that matter), so she decided to make her performance memorable. And, boy, did she ever.

You know, one these videos is worth a thousand anti-bullying PSAs because for once, the smartest kid in the room is also the coolest. And also the bravest; can you imagine the kind of chutzpah it would take to be 18 and just own it like Alaine does?

Oh, also, Alaine was named Governor's Scholar in the state of Kansas. What did you accomplish in high school? (Hi, Alaine, I'm friending you on Facebook right now. Let's hang out.)

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/25/best_graduation_speech_alaine_caudle/feed/ 15 “Successful Alcoholics” is painfully funny http://www.salon.com/2011/05/17/successful_alcoholics_lizzy_caplan/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/17/successful_alcoholics_lizzy_caplan/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 21:18:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/05/17/successful_alcoholics_lizzy_caplan Besides taking a punch or getting stitches by an old-timey doctor in the West, there are not many situations in life where it helps to be incredibly wasted. If being drunk made us smarter or more successful, then our culture's only problem with alcoholism would be that it gave people too much of a competitive advantage in the world.

This tragicomic premise is what makes the Sundance short "Successful Alcoholics" so uncomfortably funny. Lizzy Caplan ("Party Down," "Cloverfield" -- and as I personally think of her -- "The better Zooey Deschanel") and T.J. Miller (also "Cloverfield") play a couple whose severe drinking problem not only doesn’t affect their jobs ... but actually helps them. They get out of traffic tickets, go to dinner parties topless, and somehow still hold down high-paying jobs.

"What a wonderful world," you think? Not quite. "Successful Alcoholics" is now playing in its entirety over at the Huffington Post (through FunnyorDie, which has for some reason removed the video) and is worth every wincingly funny, sad moment.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/17/successful_alcoholics_lizzy_caplan/feed/ 3 Huffington Post’s “Most Read” section remains a ridiculous farce http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/huffington_post_most_read/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/huffington_post_most_read/#comments Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/04/19/huffington_post_most_read It is not news to anyone that Huffington Post balances out its critical political analysis with a bunch of celebrity slide shows about hot bikini bodies. Hey, something needs to bring in the traffic, and a lot of days Cameron Diaz making out with A-Rod is just going to get more clicks than a story on Obama and the deficit.

I also understand that PopEater is not Huffington Post, but rather an affiliated website also owned by AOL. These are all true things. And yet, I can't help feeling like today's sidebar is detracting from the website's credibility somehow.

For those of you wondering about the "white stuff," it turned out to be chocolate. And for those wondering who Vanessa Hudgens is, maybe you need to read more Huffington Post and/or watch "High School Musical." 

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/huffington_post_most_read/feed/ 15 The Webby Award nominees you didn’t know about http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/webbys_2011_nominees/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/webbys_2011_nominees/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/04/12/webbys_2011_nominees It’s almost time for the 15th annual Webby Awards, which is like the Oscars except with more Zach Galifianakis and surprisingly fewer references to Facebook. With categories ranging from Best Viral Video (Oh god, please don't let "Bed Intruder" win) to Best Weird (now would be the time to brush up on RatherGood.com), along with more serious topics like Best Political Blog (Huffington Post is on there, which is apparently not a conflict of interest to the Webbys' academy board member Arianna Huffington) and Best Social Media, the nominees reflect those groups and individuals who really poured their heart and soul onto the Web this year. Oh, and FunnyOrDie.com, because they just clean up at these things.

For a complete list of nominees, check out the Webby Awards website, and vote for your favorites. If you don't have the time to go through every viral video category, here's a couple of  under the radar gems you should definitely check out:

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/webbys_2011_nominees/feed/ 1 Natalie Portman quits veganism. Good for her http://www.salon.com/2011/04/11/natalie_portman_vegan_vegetarian/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/11/natalie_portman_vegan_vegetarian/#comments Mon, 11 Apr 2011 22:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/04/11/natalie_portman_vegan_vegetarian In 2009, Natalie Portman read Jonathan Safran Foer's book "Eating Animals" and turned vegan. Not just any vegan, though. The kind of vegan where you feel the need to make an announcement on the Huffington Post about it, and because you are Natalie Portman, people will read it and be like "Totally," when you talk about how you educated your less knowledgeable friends (at Harvard) about how "they had never truly thought about the connection between their environmental conditions and their food."

I am all for veganism, vegetarianism, whatever, but I am also a big fan of "live and let live" mentality. I also don't like to be given health advice by someone who lost so much weight on her last film that people were legitimately scared for her well-being. Let's just say, I would not buy that person's brand of vegan shoes, because there are a lot of shoes out there that are technically "vegan" (i.e., not leather) and do not cost $355.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/11/natalie_portman_vegan_vegetarian/feed/ 93 Mark Penn has awful advice for Barack Obama http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/mark_penn_advice/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/mark_penn_advice/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/04/05/mark_penn_advice Pollster grifter Mark Penn is misleading from the very first sentence of his Huffington Post column on what President Obama must do to win reelection:

Only two Democrats in the last 90 years have been reelected to a second term -- Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. The rest of the Democrats have seen their presidencies cut short, and so the historical odds of Obama winning a second term are at first glance not encouraging.

What? That is technically factual and completely dishonest. Truman and Johnson -- Democrats -- were both elected to full terms after assuming the presidency. The only recent presidents to lose elections after serving full terms were Carter and Bush and Hoover. The only other president to lose an election instead of resigning or dying was Ford.

Another way to put this is: "Only four incumbent presidents have been defeated in elections in the last 90 years, and three of those presidents were Republicans, so Obama is sitting pretty." Or: "In the last 100 years, a nice round century, nearly all presidents who served a full term and then ran for reelection were reelected."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/mark_penn_advice/feed/ 32 The stupid saga of Andrew Breitbart and the Huffington Post http://www.salon.com/2011/03/24/huffpo_breitbart/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/24/huffpo_breitbart/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/03/24/huffpo_breitbart So! Arianna Huffington -- recently put in charge of all the "content" at AOL following the dial-up ISP's acquisition of her former "liberal Drudge" Internet newspaper -- gave a blog to her old friend Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart helped build the HuffPo, back when he was just another loudmouth Hollywood conservative and not the even louder-mouthed full-tilt culture warrior he is today (thanks in part to training at places like the Claremont Institute). Hundreds of people -- many of them idiots, frauds, and liars -- have blogs at the HuffPo. But the HuffPo actually promoted Breitbart's writing on the front page of the site.

Now, Mr. Breitbart is not just a conservative pundit. He is a crusading propagandist who publishes a wide variety of untruths and smears across his "Big" websites. He is not guilty of having the wrong opinions, he is guilty of being a shameless, race-baiting bully.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/24/huffpo_breitbart/feed/ 62 The Week In Uppers http://www.salon.com/2011/03/06/the_week_in_uppers_30511/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/06/the_week_in_uppers_30511/#comments Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:28:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/03/06/the_week_in_uppers_30511 Welcome to "The Week in Uppers," a new weekly feature where we'll share a collection of stories that might not have made national headlines, but might just make you smile.

  • A stray Oklahoma city puppy was euthanized two Friday's ago. On Saturday morning? Alive and well. (AP)
  • Daniel Kish once was blind but now can see. He did it by teaching himself echolocation. (Men's Journal)
  • A dad makes the best out of a job rejection letter by ripping it up to the delight of his baby (Yahoo):

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/06/the_week_in_uppers_30511/feed/ 13 Huffington Post fires back at Stephen Colbert with new site http://www.salon.com/2011/02/18/colbert_colbuffington_post_huffbert_nation_huffington/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/18/colbert_colbuffington_post_huffbert_nation_huffington/#comments Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:51:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/18/colbert_colbuffington_post_huffbert_nation_huffington On his show last night, Stephen Colbert recycled his announcement about starting his new business venture: a Colbert-branded version of the Huffington Post called the Colbuffington Re-Post. Pricetag? $316 billion. Naturally, he wanted just a million bucks more than AOL paid for the Arianna Huffington's popular news aggregation site.

Colbert followed up with a complaint that HuffPost yet again recycled his content by posting his video. And then things get really confusing:

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/18/colbert_colbuffington_post_huffbert_nation_huffington/feed/ 6 Can Huffington transform AOL like she has herself? http://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/can_arianna_huffington_transform_aol/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/can_arianna_huffington_transform_aol/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:16:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/08/can_arianna_huffington_transform_aol AOL can only hope that longtime political gadfly and budding media baroness Arianna Huffington proves to be as adept at engineering corporate transformations as she has been at personal ones.

Since she became a prominent public figure as the wife of a multimillionaire running for the U.S. Senate in 1994, Huffington has been a darling of Bill Clinton-bashing conservatives and a heroine for liberals railing against President George W. Bush and the Iraq war.

She disavowed have any interest in becoming a political candidate herself during her husband's unsuccessful campaign only to make an aborted run for California governor in 2003. She has been criticized for falling under the influence of self-help gurus and hailed for having the courage to pursue her own convictions.

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."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/can_arianna_huffington_transform_aol/feed/ 8 AOL HuffPo buy signals news, ads push http://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/us_aol_huffington_post/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/us_aol_huffington_post/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:14:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/07/us_aol_huffington_post AOL Inc.'s $315 million deal to buy news hub Huffington Post signals that it is serious about building its profile as a media company as its legacy dial-up Internet business dies away.

The acquisition announced Monday is AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's most aggressive play so far as he tries to reshape a fallen Internet icon and boost efforts in news and online advertising. It is the largest purchase the company has made under Armstrong, a former Google advertising executive hired by AOL to engineer a turnaround.

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.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/us_aol_huffington_post/feed/ 3 Huffington Post/AOL: It’s AOL/Time Warner all over again http://www.salon.com/2011/02/07/huffington_post_aol_deal_open2011/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/07/huffington_post_aol_deal_open2011/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/07/huffington_post_aol_deal_open2011 A late Sunday night in winter and the surprise announcement of a big merger, with Kara Swisher one of the key people breaking the news: No wonder the Huffington Post/AOL announcement last night gave veteran tech and media-biz reporters a flashback to 2000 and the colossally ill-fated AOL/Time-Warner deal.

The events are similar in another way: Despite all the CEO happy-talk about synergy, we are once again watching two companies in trouble taking a big gamble that the other will solve its problems.

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.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/07/huffington_post_aol_deal_open2011/feed/ 18 AOL eats Huffington Post, Arianna to rule over all content http://www.salon.com/2011/02/07/0arianna_aol1/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/07/0arianna_aol1/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/02/07/0arianna_aol1 So AOL, a giant Internet "content" company that still makes most of its revenue by convincing old people to sign up for dial-up Internet connections that they don't need, has purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million. And now Arianna Huffington is the "head of all content" for AOL, which will be an odd arrangement for everyone.

Some people are excited for this and other people are more skeptical.

This will now be the single largest SEO-gaming operation ever created. ("SEO" is "search-engine optimization," which means creating pages designed solely to show up in Google results for queries like "what time does the Super Bowl start" or "Rihanna nude.") AOL's plan to finally make money again basically involved asking a small army of underpaid content-serfs to create an endless flood of cheap word-material that will receive more page views than there are human beings currently reading the Internet.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/07/0arianna_aol1/feed/ 51 I rode the Huffington Post Sanity bus http://www.salon.com/2010/10/31/i_was_on_huffpo_bus/ http://www.salon.com/2010/10/31/i_was_on_huffpo_bus/#comments Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2010/10/31/i_was_on_huffpo_bus I woke up wanting to smash my iPod. It was 3:50 a.m. and the iPod was playing an ersatz marimba, the first of the four alarms I set to ensure I made it to the far side of Queens to catch the Huffington Post-sponsored bus to the Rally to Restore Sanity in D.C.

Staring at my bleary reflection in the mirror, it was hard to remember why I had signed up for this. My friend Bobby had bailed on the trip the night before. Part of my Halloween costume – "regrettable tattoos" drawn on in Sharpie – had smeared onto my chin. And while the 99-cent pizza place across the street had a line down the block, there was nowhere to get coffee.

This sucks, I thought.

It all began, of course, when Arianna Huffington appeared on "The Daily Show" last month and announced, apparently on impulse, that the Huffington Post was giving away free rides to the Comedy Central-sponsored rally. "Just come to the Huffingtonne Post, 560 Broadway in SoHo. The bahss will be there. We'll take you with us," she said regally, beckoning to the audience. "We have as many bahsses as there are people to fill them." HuffPo staff heard about the gesture at approximately the same time as the rest of us. ("Arianna's $250K Bus to Jon Stewart Rally a 'Shock' at HuffPo HQ," read a headline at The Wrap.)

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/10/31/i_was_on_huffpo_bus/feed/ 60 New biz model for bankers: Predatory tax collection http://www.salon.com/2010/10/19/evil_genius_of_capitalism/ http://www.salon.com/2010/10/19/evil_genius_of_capitalism/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works//2010/10/19/evil_genius_of_capitalism George W. Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, once dismissed the disastrous implosion of Enron as "the genius of capitalism." Enron played fast and loose, and got crushed for it -- just another day in the Darwinist offices of modern financial markets. Move along, move along, nothing to see here.

In the post financial-crisis era, there haven't been too many free market defenders willing to cavalierly repeat O'Neill's laudatory words. It's hard to be celebratory when standing in a blast crater. But while reading the Huffington Post's blockbuster investigative exposé of the latest profit-generating scheme cooked up by the big banks, I couldn't help but hear an echo of O'Neill's memorable formulation. Capitalism may be down, but it's not out! (Hat tip, Angry Bear.)

Fred Schulte and Ben Protess report:

Nearly a dozen major banks and hedge funds, anticipating quick profits from homeowners who fall behind on property taxes, are quietly plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into businesses that collect the debts, tack on escalating fees and threaten to foreclose on the homes of those who fail to pay.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/10/19/evil_genius_of_capitalism/feed/ 25 Huffington pledges free bus rides to Stewart rally http://www.salon.com/2010/09/29/us_people_huffington_buses/ http://www.salon.com/2010/09/29/us_people_huffington_buses/#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:37:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/feature/2010/09/29/us_people_huffington_buses Website publisher Arianna Huffington has a ticket to ride, one for everybody who wants to get to Washington from New York for the rally scheduled by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert next month.

Appearing on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" on Tuesday, Huffington told Stewart that anyone who arrives at her office in lower Manhattan on Oct. 30 can hitch a free ride on one of her buses.

She said her "promise" is to have as many buses as people to fill them.

An information sign-up list is on the website for The Huffington Post.

Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" and a competing "March to Keep Fear Alive" led by his fellow TV host, Colbert, will take place on the National Mall.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/09/29/us_people_huffington_buses/feed/ 3 Journalists prefer to voice their opinions http://www.salon.com/2010/09/22/journalists_new_media_open2010/ http://www.salon.com/2010/09/22/journalists_new_media_open2010/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/09/22/journalists_new_media_open2010 As the beleaguring of traditional news organizations continues, newsrooms are actually growing elsewhere. You may have noticed that places like Yahoo, AOL and the Huffington Post are all hiring these days -- and they're hiring, um, actual journalists.

Yesterday we learned that New York Times economics correspondent Peter Goodman was decamping for HuffPo. "For me it's a chance to write with a point of view," Goodman told Howard Kurtz. He described fitting into the Times voice as "almost a process of laundering my own views, through the tried-and-true technique of dinging someone at some think tank to say what you want to tell the reader."

Jay Rosen commented on Twitter:

You get what this means, right? The View from Nowhere has become a liability in keeping newsroom talent

And again:

It's not so much that @petersgoodman wants to be a pundit. He wants to report what's really going on. In his own voice.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/09/22/journalists_new_media_open2010/feed/ 6