Gawker

Posts Tagged “

Huffington Post

retaliation

Petty HuffPoors Snub Gawker!

Hah! You write three little items about how blog mistress Arianna Huffington is a terror to work for and suddenly you're off the blogroll at the Huffington Post. Seriously! We've had a place on that long list since day one, but today... nothing. And after all we've done for you, Arianna! Need we remind you of that party Nick threw for you when you launched your goofy blog? (The funny thing here is that we've made fun of the content, business plan, other contributors, comments, and tone of the HuffPo for years with impunity, but now it is apparently personal?) Anyway in retaliation we're going to retroactively unpublish all the times Balk mentioned Rachel Sklar's rack. [HuffPo]

editors from hell

Arianna's Most Tortured Attendants

We asked, earlier this week, if "editors are 'retards' and servants to Arianna" Huffington, subject of an all-too-squishy New Yorker profile this week. After hearing from still more Huffington Post insiders, it would seem the answer is a resounding "yes." And an obvious "yes" to those who have come to appreciate that the ambitious divorcée draws few boundaries between her own professional and personal lives, working manically, phoning and emailing editors in the middle of the night, obsessively arranging the order of stories on HuffPo's front page and in its various sections, and hollering at her staff over an intercom in her Brentwood mansion even while she has her nails done. The only clear line, it seems, is between the smart, charming image Huffington projects to her celebrity friends and the world at large and the rather nastier and more careless Arianna seen inside HuffPo. More »

rumormonger

Are Editors 'Retards' And Servants To Arianna?

The New Yorker's big Arianna Huffington profile may have been a letdown, with very little dirt on the politics or business of the Huffington Post, as we said yesterday. And, granted, it also failed to establish that the HuffPo publisher is a "cutthroat boss," as the Post hinted it would. But those who have spent time in Huffington's orbit seemed determined to have their say. And so it is that we have come to understand more clearly Huffington's seemingly strange remark that " a lot of people who came to the office wanted to be writers" at HuffPo but left because "the jobs are administrative." That quote left one to wonder if people signed up to be Arianna's administrative assistants and were upset because they couldn't get bylines. But no. People signed up to be editors, we hear, and were upset because they were asked to do the work of household assistants. More »

moguls

The Missing Dirt On Arianna Huffington

The New Yorker published its profile of Arianna Huffington. Though disappointingly far from the juicy takedown we hoped for, it does contain a few interesting nuggets. We learn, for example, that the Republican-divorcée-turned-internet-publisher bizarrely "hides" all three of her BlackBerrys in her bathroom at night, even though she lives only with a housekeeper and her two daughters. Her gay ex-husband Michael Huffington elaborates on how she knew of his interest in men before their marriage, saying, "in my Houston town house I sat down with her and told her that I had dated women and men so that she would be aware of it." And Huffington sounds downright proud of her lack of long-term friendships, saying, "I metabolize experiences fast." But there's so much missing, so much that should be in this 14-page story, starting first with how she runs the Huffington Post — would any male mogul be profiled at such length with so little said about how he runs his business? — and continuing through to juicer questions about her dating life and cultlike religious guru. A few specifics: More »

bias

Buried: McCain Lobs Ultimate Insult At 'Times'

Haha we were going to write about this and then John McCain flew back to Washington DC to solve this economic crisis himself. Before that happened? People were talking about how either John McCain lied to us about his campaign manager's link to Freddie Mac, or that campaign manager lied to John McCain about those ties, or both. How to respond to that charge? Hah. They didn't really know! More »

the internet

Tina Brown Stumbles Early In Comeback Attempt

Tina Brown's image as a media power player remains anchored in the 1980s and the 1990s, when she edited Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. She's attempting to change that with an internet venture, the Daily Beast, funded by InterActive Corp. chairman Barry Diller. But an early blunder getting Beast off the ground has left Brown red-faced and more shackled to her past than ever. It seems Brown's big idea for launching her website was — stop us if you've heard this one before — to publish a big list of the most powerful people in Hollywood. "The idea is so 1980s," one source told Nikki Finke. Apparently no one is even bothering to call Brown's staff back as they attempt to report the feature: More »

the internet sucks

HuffPo Not For Sale! (Hint Hint)

The Huffington Post is decidedly not for sale, site founder Arianna Huffington announced yesterday in Denver. That means, most likely, that they still can't find any buyer willing to pony up anything close to that $200 million figure that got leaked to the Times. This year, the hard-working HuffPoors broke a couple political stories that decidedly altered the campaign, expanded into another city, and launched lifestyle sections with great fanfare, but let's be honest with ourselves: despite their fantastic skill with PR (thanks to Arianna's charm and moneyman Ken Lerer's experience working the press), the HuffPo is still not worth the paper it's not printed on. More »

servicey

Taking A Hatchet To Arianna Huffington: Some Tips

A New Yorker journalist is calling around for a story on the "Real Arianna Huffington," the Post reported. The scribe is supposedly asking about the allegedly ballooning value of the Huffington Post, recently pegged at $200 million, and about whether publisher Huffington is a "cutthroat boss." Perhaps the New Yorker writer — former New York Post man Ken Auletta? — should ring up HuffPo senior editor Rachel Sklar, who just last night aired news that Huffington spiked her story about MSNBC because she wants to tightly control how politics is discussed on her site. From Sklar's message on Jim Romenesko's Poynter.org forum: More »

celebutards

John Cusack's Love Letter To Chicago Sports Is Worst Celebrity Blog Post Ever Written

Last week the Say Anything actor and Hilary Duff mentor wrote a 732-word celebrity blog post commemorating the launch of Huffington Post Chicago — hey wait I thought the internet meant the end of 'placeness'!? — that contained somewhere between eight and infinity errors. Yeah, and it was about his childhood. Most have been fixed, though they are keeping his misspelling of playwright Eugene O'Neill's name, for authenticity's sake presumably. Page Six picked up the story today, noting that even the non-patently false details of John Cusack's love letter to Chicago sports are disingenuous! But if the blogs are to be believed — and in this case they are pretty credible — Cusack made one error so bad, so grievous, so fundamentally retarded, Page Six apparently couldn't bear to share it with you: More »

huffington clones

Every Print Diva Must Have A Website

You know how you are always saying to yourself "What the world needs now is a website… that would devote itself to chronicling the entertainment industry"? Well, another half million venture capital dollars has found a home trying to do that under the great helmsladyship of ex-New York Times Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman. So now it's a trend, this "internet as representing some sort of future for the media" thing! Because Tina Brown told us last week her plans for internet moguldum involve a new website called the Daily Beast, and Bonnie Fuller confirmed she was starting her own new website a few weeks before that, and while Waxman is not, like the two other media divas, internet retarded — she has a blog! — she is a lady, and as with the other two we hope her venture, The Wrap LLC fails because we're sick of having new sites we're supposed to check on the internet. More »