Citizen journalism is back on the bus for the 2012 presidential election with AOL Huffington Post Media Group’s relaunch of OffTheBus.
AOL Huffington Post Media Group Relaunches OffTheBus for 2012 Election Season
Posts Tagged ‘The Huffington Post’
Mediabistro Events
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.
Use Social Media to Market Your Business
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. AOL Huffington Post Media Group Announces User Experience, Interactive Hires
AOL Huffington Post Media Group announced the additions of former BBC head of user experience and design, multiplatform experiences Jason Fields as head of user experience and product, and former New York Times interactive news developer Andrei Scheinkman as editor of interactive news.
AOL Launches Healthy Living & Industry Social Communities
AOL is in full online-community-launching mode, announcing the debut of AOL Healthy Living, a consumer-targeted online destination focused on wellness and community engagement around mind and body health, and trade media-targeted AOL Industry, which will cover the energy, government, and defense sectors.
AOL’s Net Profits Plunge 86%
However, CEO Tim Armstrong put a positive spin on the numbers, saying the company posted its first gains in display advertising revenue since the last quarter of 2007. I applaud AOL for making gains in revenue, which looks promising. The company’s turnaround plan is beginning to take form. I haven’t marked AOL gone yet.
Well Done, Arianna, and Happy April Fool’s Day to You, Too!
The Huffington Post Media Group announced Friday that it became the latest online news source to implement a paywall — a very, very selective paywall, applying only to employees of The New York Times and residents of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Improbable? Naturally: Check your calendar.
Huffington Post Media Group Adds Six More to Editorial Staff
Huffington Post Media Group continues to expand, announcing six new hires Tuesday that bring its total since the merger of AOL and The Huffington Post to 23 editorial-staff additions.
New criminal justice reporter Radley Balko had been a senior editor at Reason magazine.
Rebecca Carroll, who has held editor positions at Uptown and Paper magazines, is on board as culture editor of Black Voices.
New deputy entertainment, culture, and lifestyle editor Maura Egan comes from T Magazine, The New York Times‘ fashion and lifestyle magazine, where she had been travel editor since 2008.
GOOD education editor Amanda Millner-Fairbanks was named education reporter.
The new religion reporter is Jaweed Kaleem, who had held the same post at The Miami Herald since 2007.
And Christopher Spurlock will become infographic design editor in May after graduating from the University of Missouri, where he produces infographics for the Columbia Missourian.
The State of the News Media 2011: AOL News Before The Huffington Post
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.
After Downsizing, Huffington Post Media Group Staffs Up
Just two business days after it was out with the old at AOL and Huffington Post Media Group, it was in with the new, as the division created by the merger of AOL and The Huffington Post announced several new hires, including two high-profile additions — Twitter co-founder Biz Stone as strategic impact adviser, and veteran journalist John Montorio as culture and entertainment editor — as well as the promotion of HuffPost senior political editor Howard Fineman to editorial director for the group.
Huffington Post Media Group and AOL also announced the addition of two new neighborhoods in Newark to Patch, in partnership with that city’s Twitter-friendly Mayor Cory Booker, and the launch of its 30-Day Service Challenge employee volunteer initiative.
Stone will advise on social impact and cause-based initiatives, including the development of a platform to make it easier for people to perform services in their communities. He will also recruit other companies to invest in and deploy best corporate practices, and create and develop a video series spotlighting companies and executives that are stellar in philanthropy and corporate responsibility.
Montorio boasts more than 30 years of experience reporting, writing, editing, and managing news staffs, including stints with The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
In his new role, Fineman will help shape Huffington Post Media Group’s overall coverage, as well as working to integrate AOL news and information brands. He will also guide coverage of the upcoming presidential campaign coverage, continuing to report for HuffPost, and retaining his role as an analyst for NBC and MSNBC.
Other new editorial hires across Huffington Post Media Group:
White House correspondent Jennifer Bendery, who had been covering The White House and House and Senate Leadership for Roll Call for the past three years;
Culture/style reporter Caroline Dworin, who had been a regular contributor to the City section of The New York Times and appeared in anthology More New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times;
Workplace reporter Dave Jamieson, who formerly covered transportation issues for TBD;
General assignment writer Saki Knafo, who previously wrote for The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, The Believer, GQ, and Publishers Weekly;
News editor Simone Landon, who had been producer of Morning Edition for Rhode Island Public Radio;
Real estate editor Catherine New, whose work has been published by The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Metro Newspaper, Flavorpill.com, Men’s Vogue, and Psychology Today;
And four new Jefferson young journalists: Katherine Bindley, who graduated from Georgetown University and was a regular contributor to The New York Times City section, as culture/style reporter; Laura Gottesdiener, who graduated from Yale University and was a staff writer for The Brooklyn Paper, as lifestyle reporter; Joy Resmovits, who graduated from Barnard College and has been at The Jewish Daily Forward since 2010, as education reporter; and Laura Stampler, who graduated from Stanford University and has written for The New Republic, The Nation, and The Miami Herald, as lifestyle reporter.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Details Thursday’s Layoffs
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong sent an email to staffers detailing the much-reported layoffs taking place Thursday. The full email appears after the jump, but highlights follow:
• Affected employees will be notified by 3 p.m. ET Thursday, followed by an all-employee call at 5 p.m.
• Nearly 200 people in the media and tech groups in the United States will be affected, along with nearly 700 in India, with some 300 of the latter transitioning to outsourcing partners.
• Assistance programs will be made available to affected employees.
• The concept of towns and mayors is being scrapped. Department editor positions will be created for each editorial department, and their partners will be the general managers (formerly mayors), who will continue to serve as CEOs.
Huffington Post Media Group Picks First Six New Hires
The Huffington Post Media Group announced its first six hires since the merger of The Huffington Post and Aol: Michael Calderone (as previously reported), Trymaine Lee, Michael McAuliffe, Jon Ward, Bonnie Kavoussi, and Lucas Kavner.
Calderone, formerly of Yahoo! News’ The Cutline, will be senior media reporter. New senior reporter Lee had been with The New York Times. McAuliffe, previously with the New York Daily News, is the new senior congressional reporter. The Daily already suffered its first loss in Ward, who was named senior political reporter. New business reporter Kavoussi is set to graduate from Harvard University. And Unigo founding editor Kavner will be The Huffington Post Media Group’s entertainment reporter.
