Bloggasm

For my latest Harvard’s Nieman Lab article, I interviewed Nico Pitney, the executive editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, about HuffPo’s liveblogging tool and whether it’s a new evolution in the art of liveblogging:

I asked Nico Pitney, the executive editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, whether HuffPo’s liveblogging tool is an attempt to marry both kinds of journalism. “We basically imagined three types of readers,” Pitney said. “One who just wanted the key facts from the story, a solid overview that’s basically a traditional news story. This person is not interested in the minute details and the liveblog coverage. Then there’s another type of user who already knows the overview and does want the key facts and liveblog coverage. And finally there’s a third kind of user — and we count this as a large percentage of our users — who wanted the overview, but then once they saw the liveblog, it got them in deeper, and it made them more engaged in the story.”

In a nutshell, Arrington claims he had a scoop that Caterina Fake was launching yet another startup, and reached out to her. But before he could publish, she spilled the beans on her own blog. This led Arrington to write an angry post, and in doing so dish dirt he’d apparently been sitting on as to what he claims is the real reason Caterina Fake left Hunch

I Call This Blackmail

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AOL will eliminate Popeater and Parentdish this month and roll them into the Huffington Post. Arianna’s people are plotting to eliminate all non huffingtonpost.com websites and redirect all traffic to the huffingtonpost.com. No one thinks consolidating to huffingtonpost.com is a good idea from a consumer or an advertiser perspective, but no one will stop Arianna.

AOL INSIDER: Here Are 12 Reasons Why The AOL-Huffington Post Merger Is Going Down In Flames (AOL)

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Graph via Denton

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After the acquisition, AOL created Huffington Post Media Group (HPMG), which runs all content outside of AOL mail, Internet messaging, and AOL Ventures. But when you look at the year-over-year results according to AOL, there’s no immediate lift. On the contrary, the number of unique visitors to AOL properties was flat, but the traffic for HPMG was actually down

AOL Traffic Falls After the HuffPo Deal and Other 10-Q Surprises

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[Huffington Post managing editor Jai Singh's] departure follows a number of others. When AOL acquired HuffPo for $315 million earlier this year, it lost that company’s chief executive (Eric Hippeau), as well as its top sales guy (Greg Coleman), although for known reasons (AOL chief Tim Armstrong once fired Coleman from an earlier job, so Coleman’s departure was expected). There were the 900 layoffs two months ago, which included the loss of experienced editorial talent. And then the string of departures from Engadget, long considered one of the leading examples of quality in AOL’s portfolio — from editor Paul Miller, who slammed the “AOL way” on the way out, to top editor Joshua Topolsky and at least six others.

Why AOL’s exodus is worrying, and time is running out

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Last week, representatives for Deadline.com’s Nikki Finke sent a cease and desist letter to the editor of competing news site The Wrap, claiming that it was “misappropriating content” owned by Deadline. However, as I noted at the time, there were no actual examples cited in the letter, and wading through the legalese it became apparent that The Wrap was not copying and pasting entire articles without attribution, but rather it’s alleged to have violated some kind of “hot news” code of ethics. In other words, Finke feels that she’s breaking stories and that The Wrap is simply re-reporting them. Unless she can provide some examples of actual infringement, the cease and desist comes off as nothing but a petty squabble. Based on past shenanigans from Finke, I think it’s safe to say we should all take any accusations from her with a large grain of salt.

Today, The Wrap officially responded to the Cease and Desist:

do have some brief comments. TheWrap has not engaged in the conduct you claim and has done nothing that violates MMC’s rights. Where appropriate, TheWrap cites other outlets and links to the source. Otherwise, TheWrap does its own reporting.

* Party Pooper: Deadline Sends Cease and Desist Letter to TheWrap Feb 23, 2011

By contrast, MMC has demonstrably and repeatedly violated my client’s rights, including but not limited to violations of the antitrust laws, (giving rise to treble damage claims), as well as unfair competition and trade libel. Indeed, MMC’s attempt to monopolize newsworthy subjects by threatening spurious lawsuits is, in itself, violative of the law, as are its numerous attempts to threaten and coerce others to refrain from supporting or dealing with TheWrap and its repeated publication of false and defamatory statements about TheWrap.

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