Monday, February 7, 2011

A heavenly match

The news across the board was remarkedly similar from one journal to another today. (What do we call the companies that produce the news? News outlets? It's a horrible term. It sounds like a storm sewer.)

The story that grabbed me was AOL's buying the Huffington Post. The Times version was pretty good -- good quotes, like this from Huffington herself about her conversation with Tim Armstrong, the head at AOL: "We were practically finishing each other's sentences. It was really amazing how aligned our visions were."

OMG! Was the Times being catty? Naw. You should read Huffington's full quote. It's on her web site. She does make it sound like they were on a date, and, wow, wasn't he fantastic or something! Soulmates, I'd say.

Other financial writers started saying things like the deal is for two or three times what it's worth, and commenters started to wring their hands about the loss of a liberal voice. The Times might appreciate this move because so much of the HuffPost's good content is lifted from the established outlets. But maybe that's in tomorrow's Times. On the other end of the scale, all those people who write for free might be a little stunned that their efforts contributed to a $300 million pie. 


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html

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