On the strength of its left-leaning political coverage, the Huffington Post has become a breakaway success, with more traffic than Drudge and more inbound links than TechCrunch. But advertisers hate politics, Arianna's favored and strongest topic, so the site is trying to diversify. As it does so, Arianna's skills — and flaws — as a manager will become more visible and more important.

Why does Huffington push herself to the point where, as both the recent New Yorker profile and those who have worked with her made clear, she has few, if any, serious friends outside of HuffPo? Why is she focused on her project to the point where associates wonder when she could find time for an affair with Cory Booker, as was bizarrely (in their eyes) rumored?

There is speculation as to the reasons. Bipolar disorder, perhaps? (There is no known evidence, only the guesses of laymen.)

Or maybe Huffington's priorities come from the teachings of the cultish Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, with which she has long been involved, for which her frequent contributor Russell Bishop launched a lucrative series of corporate "Insight" courses, and to which her live-in sister Agapi is said to be an especially fervent devotee?

Or perhaps Huffington is driven simply by ego. Within her publication it is understood, after all, that videos of her own media appearances are to be posted posthaste, top priority.

The cost of Huffington's poorly bounded ambitions are not born by her alone but also by her beleaguered staff, including aspiring journalists who until recently were hired, some claim, with no knowledge whatsoever they would take on some of the duties of administrative assistants or household servants. Duties like:

• taking heavily accented email dictation,
• arranging haircuts or troubleshooting BlackBerrys for Huffington's daughters,
• fetching lunch or coffee,
• or writing talking points for Huffington's television appearances.

There are far worse jobs, to be sure, than editor and part-time admin for one of the top sites on the internet. But a great many of those who have worked with Huffington seem bruised, and compelled to talk about — vent about — their experiences and those of others. (And yes we, of all sites, should know this sort of thing when we see it.)

From their stories one can piece together a kind of coterie of miserable self-sacrifice. Here are three members of that dubious clique:

The Passport Mule

Huffington is known for forgetfully leaving essential gear behind as she jots around the world, including, most frequently, between her Brentwood home office, HuffPo's New York office and the Mercer Hotel in SoHo. The most infamous example of this, multiple sources said, occurred when Huffington, or more likely a carelessly-instructed housekeeper, neglected to pack Arianna's passport for a trip from Brentwood. Once in New York on the first leg, Huffington realized she needed the passport to enter Canada for a fast-approaching trip to Toronto.

There was no time. An unnamed female HuffPo staffer was dispatched in the wee hours on a flight to New York. She delivered the passport to the Mercer and was promptly placed on a return flight to Los Angeles, another 18-hour day in the service of Arianna's Vortex. She may or may not have been treated to lunch in between!

Young Colin Sterling

Sterling became blog editor at the Huffington Post, and a top conduit between Arianna and the New York office, following the departure of two seasoned journalists, BBC's Elinor Shields and Rolling Stone's Frank Wilkinson, who did not fit into the publishing culture Huffington had created. Maybe Huffington couldn't let go of the site and provide them sufficient autonomy, or maybe they just couldn't mesh with Web publishing, it's not clear. (They each lasted at most a year.)

Today in his mid-20s, Sterling earned Huffington's trust as a researcher for her out West. By all accounts, his new job, with crushing demands from the very top, has taxed him. Called upon to, say, cram together TV talking points on less than half an hour's notice while riding herd over a massive, oddball stable of blog contributors, most of whom will be relegated to vertical sections far from the coveted front page, Sterling has been known to pound his desk with his fists and yell curses (a simple "Fuck!" being a favorite) immediately after hanging up on a call from Arianna, an act guaranteed to be noticed in HuffPo's open-plan 15-person Gotham newsroom.

Sterling is also, at times, short tempered with those underneath him: The public yelling and cursing are not directed only at the Gods in the wake of Arianna's calls, it seems. His "nasty" temper has made enemies, one person said, and contributed to a "Lord of the Flies" atmosphere during the three or four weeks of each month Huffington is not in New York. Other observers are much more sympathetic, but still concede his personality seems to have bent sharply to fit that of his loved and hated boss.

In fairness, it should be noted that Huffington is said to have her own short temper. Though no one has been able to confirm that she called one editor a "retard" before he quit in protest, as we reported in our last HuffPo story, none doubted she would have said it, and some insiders said it would be in keeping with other nasty slights — calling people "fucking" liars, incompetents and worse.

Thanks to Arianna's manic work schedule, hours never quite end at HuffPo for anyone on staff, by all accounts. Fairly or not, Sterling seems to have become a bit of a poster child for the ill effects of that phenomenon.

Roy Sekoff

This is the man who, everyone seems to agree, writes Arianna's blog posts, the ones she pledged would "never" be ghost written. The process will be familiar to anyone who has similarly ghosted a column for an EIC: Huffington briefly sketches an idea, Sekoff (or perhaps, on occasion, another editor) researches it and puts it to words, and Huffington does a quick check prior to publication.

Sekoff also happens to be HuffPo's top, founding editor and Huffington's right-hand man, based in Los Angeles. A family man in his late 40s, he is described as not only older but more loyal than Huffington's other editors, many of whom are in their 20s. Thus eyebrows were arched when he gave this quote to the New Yorker, implying that Huffington is often unfamiliar with the topics she is called upon to discuss on television:

I’ve literally seen her stand somewhere, look at a piece of research, and then—boom!—go on TV and, word for word, nail the three most important points and leave out everything else.

One wonders how often the research in question came from Sekoff himself, and if his quote to the New Yorker wasn't a bit of subconscious revenge on Arianna for taking credit for so much of his own work.

If anyone has more information from inside the Huffington Post, for example on the clubby process of front-page story selection, or on the parade of editors through New York, we'd love to hear from you. And we're not even sure we could stop you guys from writing in at this point if we wanted to.

The stories about Huffington's difficult temperament as a manager seem to have evolved into lore, and likely some of the anecdotes that have circulated among her burned detractors are apocryphal. And yet at least some appear to go beyond mere myth, unsurprising for a competitive, multitasking mogul like Huffington, who the New Yorker compared to a typical "highpowered, if high-strung, boss."

It must have been tough for even the New Yorker's vaunted fact checkers to separate fact from fiction in the thicket of scuttlebutt surrounding Huffington, given that she requires her employees, journalists included, to sign nondisclosure agreements.

But "dark side of Arianna and the Huffington Post" was whispered about to the New Yorker's Lauren Collins in her interviews, we're told, and some such bits are worth repeating:

• One Los Angeles-based "editor" is assigned to read Huffington's emails aloud to her and replying according to the publisher's dictation. We admit, that sounds like pretty horrifying work. Even before considering Huffington's famous Greek accent.
• Other LA editors must schedule the hair appointments of at least one of Huffington's daughters, supposedly. We're starting to get a Miranda Priestly vibe.
• Editors are also to arrange for a repairman to fix the washing machine when it breaks. Granted, Huffington has staffers working from a hidden room in her Brentwood home, so they're handy, but can't Huffington have her housekeeper do this?
• In other housework, editors are reportedly tasked with hiding potentially controversial papers and books before reporters visit. What titles could Huffington have that would, despite her reputation for an eclectic and hungry intellect, be so damaging to her image?

More sensationally, Huffington's "top editors" are said to ghost write her posts on the site, with the publisher merely approving final drafts. It would be brazen for Huffington to flout her 2005 diktat that ghost writing "will never happen" at HuffPo. But not unimaginable, given the pressures on her time.

According to one tipster, Huffington's misjudgments don't stop with signing others' work as her own. Of the nine people who have quit the Los Angeles office in the past four months, one was an editor upset after Huffington called him or her a "retard," this person said. (HuffPo is said to have five regular LA staff positions, so it seems likely some of those who recently quit may have been in temporary positions or otherwise not part of the regular area team. HuffPo also has an office in New York.)

Huffington's varied careers, as the New Yorker noted, have included work as a "commentator... socialite... Republican political wife, a divorcée cable comedienne, a self-help writer, a progressive, an early environmentalist, a failed gubernatorial candidate, a blogger, an Internet mogul." Though gifted, in many ways, at relating to other people, particularly when it can advance her interests, Huffington is not a seasoned manager. Three years after the launch of HuffPo, it is understandable that she is apparently still struggling at holding together a staff.

But it would seem a dangerous gamble for Huffington to intentionally affect the brutality and off-the-wall demands of, say, Anna Wintour. It's not clear that a website like Huffington Post, bookmarked rather than subscribed to, will ever be able to comfortably lock in readers and advertisers like a Vogue, or to offer the same sort of glamor as a perquisite to staff. Becoming more competitive at hiring, meanwhile, is a matter of mere organization, of clearly defining job boundaries and of disciplining one's temper. And what better time for Huffington to do so than now, when the press is still writing profiles of the generally flattering sort?

• The New Yorker's Lauren Collins briefly depicts Huffington holding hands with ex-boyfriend Mort Zuckerman at the recent Time 100 party. But who is she seeing now? Is it true she tends toward hot younger men? What about her rumored dalliance with Newark Mayor Cory Booker?
• Collins also delves into the much-explored topic of Huffington's affiliation with spiritual guru John-Roger. But what about how she has stocked her site with fans of the culty leader?
• Just one paragraph on the Tim Russert feud? Can she still not come up with anything nice to say? Is it true top NBC News staff hated her even more after Russert died?
• How does Arianna run the Huffington Post? What's it like to work there? It's hardly surprising or scandalous that Huffington can be an "erratic... high-strung boss" or that she has lost 15+ employees, as reported in the profile. Sample quote: "One of the frustrating things was that she had absolutely no compunctions about saying, ‘Hey, do this,’ and then saying, ‘Why did you do that? I never asked you to do that.’"
• The New Yorker might start with HuffPo's political message discipline. Huffington has spiked work that is not "congruent with HuffPost's editorial position against the media's penchant for viewing everything through a left/right prism," a convoluted position she formulated after one of her columns was used against Barack Obama.
• Which raises the question: Was HuffPo biased toward Obama? After the site reported that Obama said "bitter" working-class Americans "cling to guns or religion," HuffPo co-founder Ken Lerer, who himself said to be unhappy about the story, rushed to talk with angry Obama campaign operatives. That would be the same Lerer who convened a fundraiser for Obama at his apartment the year prior, when he was still CEO of Huffington Post. It's worth at least asking whether the Clinton campaign's accusation that the site was a "conveyor belt" for pro-Obama propaganda was more than mere campaign flackery.
• Also, why did HuffPo delay covering the latest scandal stories on Democratic politician John Edwards, despite having broken some of the earliest ones?
• If the HuffPo has been called an "internet newspaper," as the New Yorker reminds us, Collins would have been well-served to take a look at how much it spends on actual reporting. Mayhill Fowler, arguably its brightest star at the moment, paid her own expenses and received no salary. Huffington herself said many staff left because they "wanted to be writers.... the jobs are administrative."

To fit in some of these topics, the New Yorker might have had to cut out the bits about Huffington's "considerable intelligence," her "seductive" charm and how she likes hiking, "yoga, meditation and prayer." But at least the magazine would have broken some significant new ground.

UPDATE: The Huffington Post itself writes of the profile, "readers don't get much insight into how [Huffington] has actually pulled off this impressively successful website and gained a distinctly new status amid the bloody competition of the Internet."

Well ... just look at them! They old!

. . .

Photos via AP/INFGoff

Here are the two interpretations of The Huffington Post that Arianna and company would like you to forget: "left-wing Drudge Report" and "unedited celebrity Livejournal." The increasingly bloated HuffPo still is mostly an unhealthy mixture of those two things, of course, but their ambitions are higher. They have to be, to justify that ridiculous internal valuation. Hence HuffPo Chicago! And, more importantly, HuffPo Living, full of bullshit local-news quality health stories, "how to beat workplace stress" listicles (or often worse: links to those listicles posted elsewhere), alternative medicine quack-bloggers, and other "grab the apolitical old women" content. (To be fair, this shit does fit in well with Arianna's moony guru-filled California lifestyle, just as the media and political sections compliment her strident populism and personal hatred of the establishment press.)

And with entertainment and style sections, HuffPo now calls itself "The Internet Newspaper." Real newspapers across the nation spiral into bankruptcy, but HuffPo's overhead costs are much lower, what with not paying most of their contributors. And also what with not having any original reporting.

The site is still another damn aggregator, curating and linking real work done by traditional newsgatherers. With insane raving commenters, of course. And "blogs" from Nora Ephron. [Three years later and they still call each "post" a "blog." This still drives us insane.] This is the point L.A. Times media writer James Rainey makes in his slightly bitter piece on Arianna and the site. "I confess I'm as charmed and amused by the beguiling Ms. H as anyone," he says, "but also slightly queasy about whether her Huffington Post will ever offer original content and reporting that lives up to the hype and pretty packaging." What, you're not happy with featured content like "One Millenial Speaks Out: Why I'm Enrolling in Culinary School"? [Ed. note: we wuz wrong.]

But, you know, they're still working on that whole original content that will make their site actually worth what they'd like to cash out thing!

Another infusion of capital, $10 million to $20 million, is in the works, Huffington said Tuesday, to hire more reporters and editors and upgrade the site's technology. She would like to beef up political and media coverage and put at least one reporter in each of two dozen cities by the end of 2009.

Yes of course.

Still. How does the "HuffPo, even if it's not worth $200 million, is still a hot commodity that you should buy for a lot of money" story keep afloat? How the hell did that $200 million number get traction in the first place? Ken Lerer, the quiet, New York-based co-founder and Chairman, certainly helps. He's got business acumen and influence, yes, but the guy also founded a PR firm once upon a time. Nina Monk's Fools Rush In, her history of AOL/Time Warner, illustrates Lerer's ability to work "with" the press:

Hah. That's the co-founder of that strident defender of media independence and transparency the Huffington Post reveling in how well he tricked the media into loving a white-collar criminal.

This post was originally written for "Eat The Press' at the Huffington Post, but it was determined that the post was not "congruent with HuffPost's editorial position against the media's penchant for viewing everything through a left/right prism" (see here). With respect, I disagreed, and together we decided that the piece would be best placed elsewhere. Thanks to Jim for that opportunity.

More suggestions for the New Yorker:

• Look into why the Huffington Post ignored the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair at first even though it owned the story.
• Commission more hilarious artwork like the drawing above, used for the New Yorker's last Huffington story.
• Find more pointless, deeply inaccurate blog posts by Huffington's celebrity friends, like the awful thing John Cusack just posted.
• Expect Arianna to hold a major grudge. She nursed one against Tim Russert for 14 years for a profile his wife wrote that turned out to be true.
• Don't try to prove Huffington is a cutthroat boss just because she supposedly "fired assistants after one day of work." We know another internet publisher of Southern European extraction who supposedly fired someone after zero days of work. Now that's cutthroat!

[Post]

He misspelled the name "Michael Jordan." No yes, as one blogger so eloquently noted, "Michael freakin' Jordan!"

So here's the thing. Blog mistress Arianna Huffington doesn't exactly make a secret of the fact that she has lots of celebrity friends she sweet-talks into writing pointless celebrity blog posts for her big online benefit dinner; I mean, the whole first paragraph of John Cusack's post is about how Cusack was actually in Bangkok — conjuring images of Jayson Blair filing stories about the DC sniper from the Times cafeteria, a little! — but the relentless blog matron had tracked him down the night before to write the thing and for whatever reason — the accent? because writing an incredibly short sentimental missive on one's childhood is not a very difficult task, trust me? — he dutifully complied.

But like, why? And why did Huffpo commission Ryan Reynolds to write that inexplicable rumination on competitive eating that one time? And then all the Jamie Lee Curtis stuff? Why did they even give a bio page to my friend Don? If no one at Huffington Post is reading this shit — at least not closely enough to catch a misspelling of the name Michael freaking Jordan — why are we expected to? Oh right! In the event that someone will make some retarded error that the intermob can point at and say: "Wow, that was retarded!" Great. How about: Emily is right, everyone needs to get off the internet already?

But barring that: ever read a celebrity blog post you found to be monumentally pointless and/or error-ridden and/or just deeply inane? Be a dear and send it to me so I can cobble together a pointless listicle!

[Page Six]

No seriously, we actually wish Sharon, who hopes The Wrap will be the Politico of the entertainment industry even though there are already innumerable trade publications plus Nikki Finke serving that role and hello, entertainment is actually a tiny and shrinking sector of the American economy that really does not deserve as much attention as the federal government, marginally more success than we wish the other two ventures, because Bonnie Fuller is the mustard gas of American brain cells and Tina Brown's Beast sounds like another Huffington Post, which, you know, is a lovely site and all, but…do we really need more? (No.)

Why does everyone have to start new stuff all the time, anyway? Would it really be so radical for one of these broads to go work for something that already existed? Or even SOMEONE ELSE??

Full disclosure: I know Sharon sort of, because when I lived in LA I went to a party at her house one time with this old friend of mine, Evan Wright. Fittingly, Sharon had met Evan while writing a story about his internet startup, which was naturally some sort of porn company. At the time Sharon was frustrated at the Washington Post in part, I was told, because she liked "hard news" and politics and the Middle East and spoke Arabic and stuff, and also maybe because she was a little on the pathologically sloppy side. Meanwhile Evan was transitioning out of porn and into a magazine career that has since yielded two National Magazine Awards for and the much-acclaimed HBO series show Generation Kill. All of which is to say: nice job, both of you, you could be doing this.

Which is to say, hi guys! This is my first Gawker post. I'll be covering the media and ideas, which is to say, Nick Denton's ideas about the media. I am open to all venture financing I can receive via PayPal.

Are Tina Brown And Bonnie Fuller Wired For Their Shift Online? [LAT]
Sharon Waxman Aims To Be The Politico Of Hollywood [Marketwatch]

[TVNewser]

Absolutely not. I had no personal feelings towards him as I have no personal feelings towards Bob Woodward. I have a whole section in my book describing Bob Woodward as the dumb blonde of American journalism. You could say there was something personal but I've barely met him, and I met Tim Russert once.

Yeah all well and good but what do personal meetings have to do with anything? No one in Woodward's family ever wrote a thirteen-page hit piece about Arianna! We have only met Keith Gessen once and Jakob Lodwick never but we'd have to say that yes, our criticisms are personal.

She goes on to recommend Keith Olbermann for the Meet the Press job, which is kinda funny, because he's a big blowhard who doesn't stand a chance at getting the gig. But he is actually a pretty good interviewer.

In between innocuous revelations — Huffington listens to meditation tapes, collects dolls (sort of), likes cheese and just bought an espresso machine — is this casual mention of a SECRET HIDDEN BACK ROOM in her house:

Weirdest thing about (or in) your home: The upstairs office, hidden behind a bookshelf. I had it installed since I work at home. ... If you close the wood-paneled door covered by a painting of two Venetian cardinals, you'd never guess there's an entire office behind the bookcase.

An entire office tucked behind a bookshelf? Sounds like someone's been collecting some solid counter-surveillance advice!

[Chicago Tribune]

The book is roundly, universally cruel to Arianna.

Arianna Huffington had charmed me out of my socks to get me to manage her husband's campaign. But in a few short months, I'd come to realize that she was the most ruthless, unscrupulous, and ambitious person I'd met in thirty years in national politics—not to mention that she sometimes seemed truly pathological. Her allure and style were only a veneer: the soul of a wily sorceress lurked beneath.

Jeez. It's worth mentioning, of course, that after this debacle, Rollins went on to work for Katherine Harris in her disastrous Senate campaign. Until he quit and leaked terrible shit to newspapers. Rollins has a nasty habit of losing political campaigns and then blaming ambitious women, right? (Though in the Harris case, well, that was definitely her fault. She's fucking nuts.)

[Amazon]

It is a seriously nasty story that makes Arianna sound like a loopy new-age cut-throat bitch who doesn't even care about orphans. Much like the Private Eye story reported by Ed Rollins some time later (in which Arianna allegedly hired a detective to tail Orth), it's hard to know how much of it is actually 100% true. But it's still a fun ride! Click through for a couple excerpts from the piece.

So. Orth calls Michael Huffington a brain-dead idiot a number of times, quotes a dozen people calling Arianna his pupper-master, and even calls Michael gay, in two separate passages. (Michael Huffington came out as bisexual—though lots of people doubt even that—years later when the couple divorced.) Arianna joins a crazy new-age cult, whose leader organizes her wedding to a wealthy fool. Arianna pretends to volunteer for a childrens' charity but it's all a photo-op and she never does any work. She also fires all her servants and according to one unnamed observer calls Mexicans lazy.

As we said, an unfriendly story.

Years later, after the divorce, when Arianna became (once again, if you believe this piece) a bleeding-heart liberal, Vanity Fair amusingly ran another long profile of her. This one was glowing (comparatively). But then compared to the Orth piece, 13 pages of "WHAT A BITCH" would've been a friendly review. And here are some excerpts!

GALLERY














END

Republican strategist Ed Rollins wrote a memoir in which he discussed his role in Michael Huffington's disastrous run for the US Senate. Attached is the relevant excerpt, reporting the rumor that Arianna Huffington hired a private eye to tail Maureen Orth, the Vanity Fair author who happened to be married to Tim Russert.

Now Orth did write a piece on Michael. And it was terribly embarrassing for both Huffingtons. Since that story, Arianna had a political realignment, divorced her now-gay husband, and became a left-winger. Rollins remains a slimy Republican hack. It's his word against hers, and she's stringently denied the charge. But Orth believes it! So Tim probably did too. And so, obviously, Arianna did not have much to say about the death of beloved newsman Tim Russert.

• Observers note that Arianna Huffington waited several days to personally blog anything about the death of Tim Russert of Meet The Press, who she often criticized. Then when she did say something, she didn't really praise the man. Not even faint praise! Dammit, Arianna, the public DEMANDS DISINGENUOUS EULOGIES! [R&M]
• Condé Nast is accused of stiffing the widow of advertising rainmaker Steve Florio by not handing over her husband's full severance, insurance and benefits. [P6]
• "Oh, hey, you know what would be romantic, clingy Jennifer Aniston?" "What, manorexic John Mayer?" "A stay at the Mexico vacation home of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, who served jail time for filming naked underaged girls! He just asks that we not disturb any evidence!" "Yaaay!" (Sorry, it's a lot better with the puppets.)
• This picture of movie Harry Potter is seriously the most frightening thing I've seen all night. Oh, also, he's buying a butt exerciser for some kind of Broadway role (picture does not involve his butt). [R&M]
• Britney Spears took a topless swim at a tops-optional Las Vegas pool lounge. None of the paparazzi got any shots, except of Spears in a skimpy outfit, and now Spears is said to be hawking her own topless photos from the swim. Or, well, technically her father runs her business affairs now by court order so... Ew.
• Lindsay Lohan has been "amazing" on the set of her movie, which means she's not getting drunk or high or passing out or committing felonies during working hours. Well, sure, but it's summertime. There aren't any nice coats lying around to steal. [People]
• Denise Richards admits to having 10 dogs. Sure they're on a ranch, but... why? "I am not sure why there is so much drama about how many animals I have," she said. Also: after she split with Charlie Sheen, Richards totally stole Heather Locklear's man, while they were friends. But on her reality show, she says they totally weren't friends any more, for three months. [P6]

The tale comes from a blogger who witnessed the shoot, and he's posted what look like authentic photos, so, you know. This is why Chris is so mad:

"I want you to know that she hired a Private Investigator to spy on one of my colleagues; someone in the media." Tucker walks in at that point and I'm literally writing down what he just said on a paper towel so I'd remember that quote. Oh yeah, so Tucker walks in and says, "Yup, he's right, she did hire someone and nobody really talks about it, but I really like her so it doesn't bother me."

Well. Who on Earth would Arianna be spying on? Russert? That would make Chris very, very mad, because he hearts Little Big Tim v v much. But jeez, what is there to even spy on with Russert? Who cares?

Anyway, Chris continued to be more or less a pain, though he came back and apologized for the outburst. And Tucker was apparently a real charmer! Friendly and joking! We've long known him to be an idiotic pain-in-the-ass, but sociopathic narcissists are often totally fun dudes when they've no reason to feel threatened or challenged. Unlike constantly self-doubting Chris, Tucker loves himself.

So the best thing Tucker said to me, after he said, "I eat at least one steak a day...I don't eat bread." He followed that quote with this, "There are three things I love. Cookies, alcohol, and Marlboro Reds."

Not sure if we're buying this anymore! But:

Another kinda funny thing that Tuck did (I'm gonna call him Tuck from now on) was he got a phone call from his publicist or someone, and he answers, "Hello!?!? Oh hey. No - what photo shoot? Oh fuck! I'm still in what's her name's hotel room, I'm tremendously hungover and I'm looking for my boxer shorts - I'll be there soon..."

Then started laughing and said, "I'm just kidding Jack...I'm actually hungover but I'm here with the photo crew..."

Sounds plausible. So who knows!

Update: The rumored private eye was supposedly hired to stalk Tim Russert, after Russert's wife Maureen Orth wrote mean things about Arianna and her gay Republican husband in Vanity Fair. This was back in 1994. Arianna has denied it for years, but apparently Chris Matthews still holds a grudge. Weird.

UPDATE 2 OMG:

So! Tucker denies saying any of the things he is quoted as saying! He emailed Nick (and not your humble day editor, sigh) to set the record "straight":

Nick,

I just read your Gawker item that describes a photo shoot Chris Matthews and I did yesterday morning at NBC in Washington. I have no idea who wrote it, but it's filled with completely false quotes attributed to me. Here's one: I'm described as saying I love cookies, alcohol and cigarettes. Except that I don't smoke and haven't had a drink in six years.

This is my good e-mail address. Please send warning next time you plan to libel me.

Thanks,

Tucker Carlson

One of the things that is kind of funny about Tucker is that he obsessively reads everything written about him on the internet and responds, personally. He once emailed Wonkette to clarify that he doesn't eat at McDonalds, ever. We take him at his word that he said none of these things, but we are actually pretty sure we saw him have a drink at a White House Correspondents Dinner reception once? We could be wrong!

BUT! The guy who published the report from the kid who witnessed the shoot (who has taken the post down) stands by every word of the story, and says the original author doesn't misquote people.

No one said the session was off-record. And [redacted] never signed anything saying it was confidential. Seeing that it was a Conde Nast shoot, Matthews and Carlson were likely just playing their off-screen acts for a magazine. Now everyone is demanding apologies and making threat upon threat. Should [redacted] have written a word for word account? Probably not, but it seems an honest mistake.

FURTHERMORE! Arianna sez Tucker sez he never said anything about the private eye that SHE sez she never hired! It's an ancient rumor that she claims is wholly made up.

And now you know the rest of the story! It's all confused and insane! Nobody knows ANYTHING, as William Goldman used to say about Hollywood.

Late in the evening a frisson rippled through the upper lobby as Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi came up the stairs. No matter that the Australian media mogul gave former Nixon aide Roger Ailes a cable news network to play with, nor that he publishes the neo-con rantings of the Wall Street Journal's opinion pages, and the nauseating moralizing of Andrea Peysner in the New York Post. Murdoch was immediately surrounded by friends and sycophants.

Best moment: Maer Roshan dragged photographer Nikola Tamindzic over to capture a moment of pretend intimacy with the 77-year-old tycoon. The move had all the subtlety of a high-school girl who was still trying to make her ex-boyfriend jealous: the intended audience was Mort Zuckerman of the Daily News, who let Roshan's magazine run out of money before he found a new benefactor.

But by the time Roshan managed to tap Murdoch's shoulder and extract him from his group, Nikola was distracted by some pretty girl; by the time the Radar editor refocused the Serbian photographer on the task at hand, a friend of Murdoch, Tom Freston, came over to have a tycoony chat; and by the time a slightly embarrassed Roshan finally got his photo opportunity, Zuckerman was distracted by a gold-digging Julia Allison. "He's single, right?" she asked.

Hey girls! Mort Zuckerman — owner of the New York Daily News — is single.

Larry David — creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm — is single.

Star talking head Julia Allison — seen here talking with Business Week's Sarah Lacy — is dressing for her new target demographic.

Matt Nye, Jann Wenner's boyfriend, with spiritualist Kathy Freston. It's a hard life being the spouse of tycoon; nobody else understands that.

Julia Allison looks a little different. Ah yes, no hand on hip. Or maybe something else.

Charlie Rose and Mort Zuckerman can at least turn on the charm when they need to. Liberal pundit Eric Alterman has no mode but obnoxious.

The power picture: Charlie Rose, Mort Zuckerman, Arianna Huffington, Jann Wenner and Rupert Murdoch.

Jacob Bernstein, son of the Watergate investigator, is thinking about his flat-screen television at home.

Yes, Wendi Deng is indeed hot — and tall. Seen here with Lloyd Grove, the former gossip columnist.

No matter how much he begs, not a penny into that Radar magazine. Mogul to mogul, let me tell you: worst decision I ever made.

Something about George Bush's crimes against humanity, probably.

PBS's Charlie Rose.

What on earth is Mediabistro's Laurel Touby doing here? I didn't recognize her without the boa.

This man looks important, but I have no idea who he is.

Rich gay men make such good fathers. (Arianna Huffington, whose husband Michael turned out to be a political loser and "bisexual" — with Jann Wenner. The Rolling Stone author and his boyfriend had a baby with a surrogate mother.)

You know who this is, don't you? The hotel bellboy — must have been living on some blissful service industry planet without continuous cable talk shows — didn't. "Can I help you, miss?" he asked. "Where is the Huffington car?" she replied.

Photos by Nikola Tamindzic

The man just naturally says whatever the hell his audiences want to hear. This is why, in small, intimate settings, everyone comes off impressed with John McCain's honesty and no-bullshit approach. This is why the media loves him. He's chatty, he's charming, and he will immediately key in on exactly how to convince you that he's on your side. And he'll crack a few off-color jokes!

The greatest trick the bullshit artist ever played was convincing his audience that he's innately honest. And John McCain is old and senile enough that he probably does believe his own hype now, which is how he can so comfortably categorically deny things that he's on record as saying.

And it's why people like Arianna and Jon Stewart feel so confused and betrayed! Because he told them, face-to-face, no-bullshit, whatever the hell they wanted to hear, back in the day. And then, because he has to run for president, he went and said and did the opposite things. McCain hasn't been on the Daily Show once since he clinched the GOP nomination. But tomorrow, he'll appear on the show for his record 13th time. It'll probably be an awkward interview.

In October, the site hired a new chief executive, Betsy Morgan, from CBS Interactive, and this summer the site will take an ambitious step by introducing its version of a metropolitan section: local versions for major cities.

Whether readers will follow the site into new areas, however, is an open — and expensive — question. The plan will put The Huffington Post into competition with existing newspapers and, arguably, with companies like Yahoo, AOL and CNN.com.

...said Micah L. Sifry, the editor of the blog TechPresident.com: "Will people go to The Huffington Post for great sports blogging? They’re certainly not going to go see what Arianna says about opening day."

Depending on specifics, HuffPo's local expansion could put the site into competition with local blog networks like Gothamist and Curbed.

A HuffPo with huge traffic, a small staff and lots of free celebrity content is probably worth some serious coin. A HuffPo entangled in the lower-margin business of local news is going to be valued more like one of those sad newspapers Arianna is supposedly helping to destroy.

[Times]