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Yesterday we brought you the story of Glen Maxey, the gay former Texas legislator who wrote a book recounting his work with an unnamed reporter for an unnamed news outlet to document Rick Perry's homosexual dalliances. According to Politico, that news outlet was none other than the Huffington Post. More »
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Arianna Huffington pushed out TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington in September, cementing her role as AOL's one true blog master. Now the slow gutting of TechCrunch continues. More »
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Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL just sealed a deal to sell premium display advertising space for one another and for any smaller companies that join the consortium. That sounds like an antitrust case in the making, but the parties have one accurate defense against charges of collusion: Google is bigger and scarier. More »
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Arianna Huffington found the name "PopEater" tacky, so she threw everyone overboard and shut the AOL entertainment site down. That, at least, is the unauthorized message Huffington's former minions published to the world via Huffington's servers. More »
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For TechCrunch's MG Siegler, temptation came from the clubby world of venture capital. For the New York Times' Nick Bilton, the lure was in the blindingly lit studios of a TV network. The writers made different choices—one took the money, the other turned it down—but the scope of their offers alone is the sign of a world gone mad. More »
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The wheels seem to be coming off Jerry Guo's wagon. Yesterday the internet entrepreneur admitted to misleading people during his time at Newsweek and just after. Today comes word he was fired from an AOL site over dishonesty. And it's not clear how much technology is actually behind his tech startup. More »
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After a protracted back and forth over his fate, editor Mike Arrington is truly finished at TechCrunch, the influential website he started in 2005 and sold to AOL almost exactly one year ago. AOL says Arrington "decided to move on" to running his venture capital fund, relinquishing any role at TechCrunch or AOL. More »
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We all have a laugh whenever an email from an @AOL.com address shows up in our inbox, usually because it comes in blue Comic Sans. But Politico's Ben Smith today tries to make the case that AOL email addresses are a "status symbol". More »
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Has the AOL civil war descended into a sad, juvenile battle for WordPress admin privileges? An angry blog post was mysteriously deleted from the company's hotly contested TechCrunch blog, leaving "Page Not Found" at the top of its list of most popular posts. More »
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The bizarre conflict that developed at AOL over Labor Day weekend—over the role of Mike Arrington, the outspoken founder of tech blog TechCrunch, and the AOL-backed CrunchFund venture capital vehicle—seems to have come to a dramatic (if unsurprising) conclusion: With Arrington's departure from AOL. More »
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A Byzantine drama unfolded this weekend over whether Mike Arrington will be fired from TechCrunch, the tech blog he started. He's already been ousted as editor, supposedly because he's starting an investment fund, and that's a huge conflict of interest. But the ethical concerns are bullshit. This is a power play by Arianna Huffington, plain and simple. More »
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Creative Artists Agency is reportedly discussing opening a Silicon Valley office where tech executives would become "rock stars." And they may start with Biz Stone, the vodka pitchman, Twitter co-founder, AOL adviser, and blogging how-to author. Stone is a good choice, being undistracted as he is with being an actual functioning technology executive. More »
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AOL chief Tim Armstrong could certainly be forgiven for handing off control of the company. The problems at AOL were largely his creation, and recently growth largely that of his lieutenant Arianna Huffington. Pressure from the press is mounting. And, we hear, he has political ambitions. More »
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Professional designers have finally had it with the Huffington Post always asking for free shit all the time. You're a publicly traded company now, HuffPo. You can design your own damned logo for politics coverage. More »
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In your maudlin Monday media column: CNN has more 9/11 documentaries than you can shake a stick at, Patch is incredibly expensive, 23 more newspapers get paywalls, the Richmond newspaper shrugs off an ad-stravaganza, and a French newspaper caper. More »
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AOL shares closed down 26 percent today, despite posting its first ad sales increase since the company was spun out from Time Warner. The problem? The disastrous AOL-HuffPo merger seems to be catching up to the internet conglomerate. More »
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In your balmy Monday media column: the ethics of getting journalistically blazed are debated, the WSJ yes-persons defend their hefty salaries, a Sudanese journalist is jailed, AOL's sales chief is out, the NYT chronicled, and no one trusts the media. More »
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The Huffington Post indefinitely suspended a young blogger today for rewriting too much of someone's news article. This is pretty ridiculous, given HuffPo's systematic, officially-sanctioned approach to rewriting too much of people's news articles. Just ask a HuffPo veteran. More »
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In your hazy Thursday media column: Patch struggles with internet tendencies, Wall Street loves News Corp, Chris Matthews is banned from HBO, "new media residuals" sucks, and the AP warns reporters about the Twitter. More »
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In your threatening Tuesday media column: major layoffs at Gannett, Randy Michaels is back in radio, AOL eyes paid online content, rumors of OK! Magazine being sold, and Fortune poaches from the NYT. More »
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Sure, we'd heard there was a civil war at AOL following the Huffington Post merger. But we never imagined we'd be hearing tales quite so evocative of schoolyard bullying. Team HuffPo is apparently the meanest clique at AOL Junior High. More »
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Arianna Huffington was controversial back when she only oversaw 70 or so employees. Now that she's riding herd over 1,300 AOL journalists, the Huffington Post founder faces an army of disgruntled enemies. And they're leaking to the press. More »
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Well, here are some new embarrassing Anthony Weiner self-pics, purportedly sent to a woman from his Blackberry in early May. They're being slowly leaked out by Andrew Breitbart all day, the tease. More »
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AOL's Arianna Huffington said at a conference today, "if you buy some AOL stock right now, you're going to make a lot of money." And people actually listened; AOL stock hit a 19-day peak. What is wrong with people? More »
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One arranged marriage to a Hellenic blogging empress and massive employee cull later, obsolescence-battling internet service AOL finally finds itself facing the music. But despite an 86% tumble in profits, chief executive and content cheerleader Tim Armstrong remains unflappably optimistic about the company's prospects. His plans might be bold, he acknowledges to The New York Times, but they're working! More »
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In your brash Wednesday media column: Chris Matthews' wacky idea of "influential journalists," Alex Kuczynski strips, AOL's momentary earnings lapse, Adam Moss's reading list, crazy UK libel laws, and Newsweek's subtle Bin Laden cover. More »
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Ever since The Huffington Post sold itself off to AOL for an enormous pile of treasure, the legions of people who've been happily blogging for HuffPo for free for all these years have been asking themselves: Hey, shouldn't we get a piece of that pie? Now, they are demanding it. More »
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Two months after AOL acquired her website the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington has begun refashioning the internet conglomerate into a gigantic digital mirror whose reporters will document every last twitch of her ego. Or so says Arianna Huffington. More »
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Meet Greg Coleman, Sundar Pichai and Neal Mohan. They are having an awesome week. A week that involves, collectively, roughly $150 million dollars in bonuses; monster severance for short-lived jobs; and orders to report to a new boss in Paris. More »
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Few managers enjoy firing people, but at efficiency-obsessed AOL, layoff skills are apparently considered crucial: The internet conglomerate just dismissed a top editor for firing writers and then telling them they could write for free. More »
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Extending a wave of layoffs, AOL reduced its entire business news team to one or two people and is expected to use Huffington Post staff to pick up the slack. Because that's what HuffPo is famous for: business news. More »
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Now that the Huffington Post has taken over editorial operations at AOL, freelance AOL movie writers will be transitioned to a new compensation model that replaces contractual pay with deep, deep appreciation and possibly compliments. More »
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Employees at Google and AOL are among those going barefoot today to raise awareness of shoeless poor kids. If only there were some other way rich techies could help third world children, aside from disgustingly and dangerously removing their shoes! More »
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Former Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky and a bunch of his old staff have defected from Engadget owner AOL to a blogging company run by their former boss. But not before making clear how much AOL sucked. More »
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In your springy Monday media column: reporters get great bonus opportunities, Katie Couric's future in detail, the SF Chronicle eyes a paywall, the freelancer purge at AOL, and Ken Auletta on Robert Thomson. More »
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In your improbably snowy Wednesday media column: CNN's new strategy, all important and unimportant NYT news, HuffPo tells AOL freelancers their fate, Jane Pratt's back, and an honest journalism job ad. More »
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Yesterday, Tech Crunch writer Alexia Tsotsis did a noble thing: she more or less told her parent company to fuck off, in public, after a Moviefone/ AOL rep emailed her suggesting that the "snark" be "toned down." That was entertaining. But the response of Moviefone is even more entertaining! If you like unbelievable things. More »
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The two top content generators—er, editors at AOL's massively popular tech blog Engadget, Josh Topolsky (pictured) and Nilay Patel, have quit, according to All Things Digital. We were hoping for a juicy tale of combat with AOL's new content manager, Arianna Huffington's Blackberry, but the departure has more to do with AOL's lame corporatism. It can't be a coincidence that this comes just a month after new AOL boss Tim Armstrong unveiled his insane scheme to squeeze way more content and pageviews from fewer bloggers (aka "The AOL Way"). Well, here's fewer bloggers. More »
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While what comes before the @-symbol may include the letters and characters you picked out, what comes after it still says a whole lot about you. A new study breaks down the types of people that use different types of free email services. More »
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In your painful Thursday media column: major layoffs at AOL, reporters in peril in Libya, the latest Katie Couric career rumors, anonymous commenting debated, and Newsday is new, somehow. More »
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