AOL to buy Huffington Post*

AOL, which has tread heavy into the content arena with AOL news staff and its Patch sites, has agreed to buy Huffington Post for $315 million. Arianna Huffington will continue to lead HuffPo, Reuters reports. The deal calls for AOL and HuffPo to integrate content. From Reuters:

"The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers," said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL.

*The New York Times reports that Arianna Huffington will run editorial operations for the entire AOL network, not just the Huffington Post content. From the story:

Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone.

One has to look no further than "The AOL Way" to know that AOL could use some editorial guidance. Whether Huffington is the one to provide it is another matter. Here's more from the New York Times has more:

While Huffington Post has been growing — it now employs more than 200 people, a threefold increase in just the last few years — AOL has been shrinking. Last year it eliminated close to 2,500 positions, roughly a third of its staff. Although its most recent earnings estimates beat Wall Street expectations, revenues for the fourth quarter were down 26 percent from a year earlier as dial-up customers continued to disappear. Ad revenue, which is seen as the company’s main business going forward, was down 29 percent from the year before. 

-snip- 

The Huffington Post, too, has faced criticism over its content, much of which is aggregated from other news sources. But it has started to invest more in original reporting and writing, hiring experienced journalists from The New York Times, Newsweek and other traditional media outlets. By acquiring The Huffington Post’s reporting resources, AOL hopes to counter the perception that it is a farm for subpar content.

Two more leave Newsweek

Investigative reporter Mark Hosenball is leaving Newsweek to join Reuters as "money and politics" reporter. Adam Kushner, senior editor for foreign coverage for Newsweek, is headed to the National Journal Group, where he'll be deputy magazine editor-in-chief. Both moves reported by Gorkana.

Four today

1. Reuters is looking for News Ninjas to do New & Cool stuff. Context: Forge (via Nieman Journalism Lab)

2. The Society of Environmental Journalists awarded Charles Duhigg of the New York Times first place for his woefully under-read series on toxic water. SEJ (via Romenesko)

3. Google and Verizon are for net neutrality ... sort of. Time

4. If you ate paste in first grade, you're probably eating paste now. Gawker

Four in the morning

1. David Brooks blames the message the messengers choose to deliver for Gen. Stanley McChrystal's downfall. NYT

2. Robert Rector eviscerates a Michigan lawmaker's cheeky proposal to license journalists. Robert Rector

3. Walter Shapiro says the Rolling Stone exposé of Gen. McChrystal means the end of fly-on-the-wall journalism for now (which will make David Brooks [see above] happy). Politics Daily

4. The Internet overlords want to give online pornography its own .xxx suffix. Reuters

Protests in Thailand turn violent

A cameraman for Reuters is among the 15 people killed as anti-government protesters and army troops clashes in Bangkok. AP has the latest. Todd Ruiz is following the action over at Reporter in Exile.

Four today

1. The newest Senator from Delaware argues for a robust federal shield law for journalists. LAT

2. The San Francisco Chronicle claims that it has cut itself to profitability. SF Weekly

3. Caught in trap of naughtiness, Canada's second-oldest magazine will reluctantly change its name: "Market research showed us that younger Canadians and women were very very unlikely to ever buy a magazine called The Beaver no matter what it's about." Reuters

4. The sportswriter who outed Mark McGwire's steroid use gets some vindication. E&P in Exile

Four in the morning

1. Did the straight party-line vote for new Assembly Speaker John Perez reflect a bias against homosexuals? Capitol Weekly

2. Nondisclosure agreements for Los Angeles Times editors. LAO

3. Reuter's editor-in-chief says he spiked a story about a hedge fund manager that "could have run." Gawker

4. When hit counts trump ideology. LAT

Drudge, Reuters and the Breitbart connection

Gawker has an interesting story about a profitable arrangement between Reuters, Andrew Breitbart and Matt Drudge.

Here's the setup:

...a large percentage of the stories the Drudge Report links to are newswire stories, which can be licensed by any entity willing to pay for them. An Associated Press story, for example, may be carried on literally hundreds of sites – and Drudge is free to link to whichever one of those sites he chooses, for whatever reasons. In turn, the lucky site he links to is rewarded with a huge blast of monetizable traffic through no reportorial work of its own.

How does it pay off for Breitbart?:

Over the course of a year, the Drudge Report links to thousands of AP and other newswire stories. At some point, Breitbart realized this was basically like pouring money down a drain, only worse. It was like pouring money down a drain that some random newspaper publisher was sitting under, cackling gleefully as the money poured down on him.

Why, Breitbart must have wondered, couldn't he be that cackling publisher? A newswire portal would require little investment other than the newswire licensing fees, and yet with the Drudge Report sending it a thundering river of traffic every day, it could potentially make millions of dollars in advertising too.

And so, in 2005, Breitbart launched Breitbart.com, which is basically a portal for newswire stories. Links to Breitbart.com from the Drudge Report followed. A study found that in the year the site launched, 25 percent of the links on Drudge pointed to Breitbart.com.

So how did Reuters, a bastion of "liberal media," hook up with Breitbart, the self-appointed basher of "liberal media"? Well, Reuters was one of the wire services Breitbart had a license with. Then they broke up. Then Reuters came back with a new idea:

Typically, newspaper sites pay newswires to license their content, and that's what Breitbart was doing until Reuters cancelled its original contract with him. Now, it wanted to switch things up.

Under the terms of the new proposal, Breitbart would not be able to publish complete Reuters stories on his own website. Instead, he'd merely publish headlines and summaries that would link to Reuters' own page.

How did this change Drudge Report's link habits?:

The Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com just 29 times from January 1, 2005 to October 14, 2005. Then, Breitbart signed his new deal to drive traffic to Reuters.com for money. From October 15, 2005 to December 31, 2005, the Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com 229 times. ... In 2006, the Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com 1888 times.

Read the whole story here.

The Denton rule*

Last week, Gawker's Nick Denton told his writers to post quickly and fix any falsehoods with updates. So I wonder what Denton would say about Reuters' decision to write a story based on a bogus memo that said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had essentially reversed itself on a pending climate change bill?

*Update: Dana Milbank writes that the Yes Men perpetrated the memo hoax and even held a mock press conference yesterday that, to the surprise of the journalists sitting among the actors pretending to be journalists in the audience, was rudely interrupted by a member of the real U.S. Chamber of Commerce and then broke down into a bizarre argument about legitimacy.

So how can a reporter separate truth from fiction? From Milbank:

There were clues, of course, such as the name of the Chamber "spokeswoman" listed in the original news release: Erica Avidus. Reporters and bloggers later figured out that "avidus" comes from a Latin word meaning greedy.

But in an instant news culture, who has time to check out such things?

Four in the afternoon

1. Online advertisers and publishers are adopting policies to let consumers know that their online behaviors are being tracked - the companies hope self-imposed rules will hold privacy advocates and government regulators at bay. NYT

2. A federal judge has tentatively dismissed the case against a woman convicted of using MySpace to bully a 13-year-old girl, who later committed suicide. LAT

3. A new social networking site aimed at collecting news from non-news sources allows readers to assign credibility ratings to posts. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out: "One recent post with a high credibility rating said the Ark of The Covenant was about to be unveiled." Reuters

4. Ombudsman at the Washington Post calls the paper's plan to sell access to reporters and editors "pretty close to a public relations disaster." WaPo

North Korea sentences U.S. journalists to 12 years

The North Korean government today sentenced Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years in prison for illegally entering the country. From Reuters:

North Korea found two U.S. journalists it has held since March guilty of illegal entry and sentenced them to 12 years hard labour, its official KCNA news agency said on Monday.

The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV, were arrested while working on a story near the border between North Korea and China. Their trial opened on Thursday.

Mozilo charged with civil fraud

As was anticipated for months, the SEC today charged Angelo Mozilo, former CEO of the mortgage giant Countrywide, with civil fraud. The charges will play out as a civil lawsuit again Mozilo and two other former executives at the company. Details of the case should become clearer after SEC officials hold a press conference today.

From Gina Keating at Reuters:

The case against Mozilo, long one of the most prominent officials in the U.S. mortgage lending industry, constitutes the highest-profile civil case stemming from the U.S. housing collapse.

Mozilo co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and publicly expressed strong confidence in its prospects and survival even as problems began to mount. Bank of America Corp bought the company for $2.5 billion last July 1.

Keating also reports that federal prosecutors are still trying to develop a criminal case against Mozilo.

*Mozilo also made Time magazine's list of 25 people most to blame for the financial crisis.

North Korea to try jailed journalists

North Korean officials said today that Current TV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling will be put on trial June 4. The two journalists are accused of entering the country illegally and with "hostile intent." Reuters

Broad makes noise about buying the Times

In a speech given Monday in New York, Eli Broad said he's still interested in buying the Los Angeles Times from the now-bankrupt Tribune Co. - not outright but through a partnership that includes his foundation.

From Reuters:

Broad, jokingly, said: "I've regained my sanity since then," referring to his earlier interest. But turning more serious, he added: "I would like to see our foundation and others join together to own the LA Times."

Even then, budget constraints would likely be at play. "I am not sure it can be a national paper, or have the same aspirations it once had," said Broad. He added that one way to broaden reach could be tie-up with The Washington Post Co.