The Huffington Post aims to be a leader when it comes to following, adding new features that give its readers the options of following topics, or specific bloggers and reporters, including updates via Twitter, Facebook, or email when new content is posted.
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The State of the News Media 2011, an annual report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, examined AOL‘s investment in news prior to its $315 million agreement to acquire The Huffington Post.
According to the report’s findings, prior to the HuffPost acquisition, AOL added 900 employees during the summer of 2010, with about one-half of them going to its Patch hyperlocal news network.
According to the PEJ News Coverage Index, 42 percent of top stories on AOL News in 2010 were written by AOL staff, up sharply from 7 percent in 2009.
As for Patch — currently in around 800 towns, with a goal of topping 1,000 by the end of 2011 — AOL spent $50 million in 2009 alone. According to comScore, Patch had 3 million unique visitors in December 2010, about 80 times its audience of December 2009.
As for its new acquisition, not factoring in hires announced Monday or last week, most of HuffPost’s staff was made up of curators and editors, and not content creators, with just four out of 60 staffers in 2009 named as reporters, and that number at around 18 in 2010.
Journal Register CEO John Paton is aiming high, telling Beet.TV that his 324 or so publications, which serve more than 900 communities in 10 states, will beat Aol’s Patch and The Huffington Post in its home markets.
Paton said his company’s sites are reaching 16 million monthly unique visitors, up from 13 million last year.
A news announcement at midnight on Super Bowl Sunday had better be something big if it expects to attract any kind of attention, and in the media world, this one was huge (and shocking): Aol announced that it will acquire The Huffington Post, and that HuffPost co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington will assume the post of president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, encompassing all HuffPost and Aol content including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, and StyleList.
The transaction is valued at $315 million, with approximately $300 million to be paid in cash funded from cash on hand, and it is expected to close in the late first quarter or early second quarter of this year.
Accuracy is important in analyzing President Barack Obama‘s State of the Union speech Tuesday night, as well as the Republican response immediately thereafter by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), so The Huffington Post, the Sunlight Foundation, The Center for Public Integrity, and National Journal will team up to provide real-time fact-checking of the speeches, which can be followed using Sunlight Foundation’s Sunlight Live real-time platform and via Twitter hashtag #SOTUFACTS.
Journalists and policy experts from the respective organizations will team up to quickly identify and point out any inaccuracies in the speeches, focusing on issues including national security, health reform, taxes, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the economy.
The Huffington Post added an even dozen people to its sales staff, with president and chief revenue officer Greg Coleman saying:
Bringing on such a wide-range of talent — a remarkable group of industry professionals from some of the best names in media — marks a key milestone in the build-out of our sales platform. We’re now ready to fully capitalize on the success of The Huffington Post brand and further deepen our engagement with marketers.
CEO Eric Hippeau added:
Greg Coleman has been hard at work building a sales team that can execute his ambitious vision for bringing our business to the next level. We’re better situated than ever to connect with key marketers who see HuffPost as offering a unique hybrid of news and opinion with an attitude, a passionate and engaged community, and a site built around sharing via social tools and the latest technology.
The 12 additions:
The New York Times Sunday Business editor Timothy L. O’Brien joined The Huffington Post as national editor, where he will oversee politics and culture reporters and contribute to business coverage with executive business editor Peter S. Goodman, as well as penning features and columns.
O’Brien has helmed Sunday Business since 2006, and he won a Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Journalism in 1999. Prior to the Times, he worked with The Wall Street Journal, Talk Magazine, and National Geographic.
The Huffington Post co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington said in an interview with Bloomberg that the news site will reach the black in terms of annual profit in 2010, and that it aims to more than triple its sales from $30 million this year to $100 million in 2012. Huffington told Bloomberg:
People don’t want just to consume news. They want to share it, they want to advance it, and add to it. We’re profitable despite the fact that we’re investing a lot in growing.
On the perception of news-aggregation sites like HuffPost:
The view is changing. That’s why we get tons of requests every day from newspapers and other sites, asking us to link to their work.
On whether HuffPost will explore a sale:
It’s working. Everybody’s happy with how it’s going. Nobody is in a hurry to cash out.
The Huffington Post did some major shuffling at its bureau in Washington, D.C., as reported by Betsy Rothstein of sister blog FishbowlDC.
The moves: Nico Pitney is now executive editor, based in New York; Ryan Grim is Washington bureau chief; and Sam Stein will take on assignment editing, along with his duties as senior White House correspondent.
HuffPost co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington told FishbowlDC:
As the D.C. bureau has continued to expand, it’s become more important than ever to manage our resources effectively while allowing team members to play to their strengths. With Nico as our new executive editor, he’ll continue to add his flair and judgment in managing the front page, while helping oversee editorial team planning, supervising the training of new editors, and facilitating the close interaction between our edit and tech teams. As Washington bureau chief, Ryan will manage the Politics team while continuing to report. Sam Stein will also continue his work as our White House correspondent while overseeing story assignments.
Ryan has an amazing understanding of the nuts and bolts of how Washington works. But he never loses sight of the fact that, ultimately, politics isn’t a horse race and it isn’t a game — policies have a real impact on real people. He also has terrific sources on both sides of the aisle, and has shown a willingness to help direct and help his colleagues.
The Huffington Post co-founders Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer scoffed at accusations by Democratic consultants Peter Daou and James Boyce that the Web site was their idea and that a handshake agreement was violated, Politico reported.
Huffington and Lerer called the accusations “a completely absurd, ludicrous supposition” in an email to Politico, adding:
We have now officially entered into Bizzaro World. James Boyce and Peter Daou, two political operatives who we rejected going into business with or hiring six years ago, and who had absolutely nothing to do with creating, running, financing, or building The Huffington Post, now concoct some scheme saying they own part of the company. For months now, they have been trying to extract money from us. They are filing the lawsuit of course because we did not agree to any payment.
Daou and Boyce wrote in their complaint, according to Politico:
Huffington has styled herself as a “new media” maven and an expert on the effective deployment of news and celebrity on the Internet in the service of political ends. As will be shown at trial, Huffington’s and Lerer’s image with respect to The Huffington Post is founded on false impressions and inaccuracies: They presented the “new media” ideas and plans of Peter Daou and James Boyce as their own in order to raise money for the Web site and enhance their image, and breached their promises to work with Peter and James to develop the site together.
Daou and Boyce plan to file a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Politico reported.
