This guy has an important job. He makes people want to see movies. http://t.co/U6aEaO20 ~ docuguy

Trouble in Huffpo Paradise

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

You see the wedding announcement? The Huffington Post was bought by AOL. Some money changed hands, like the $315 million kind, which is about $315 million more than I’ve ever been paid for writing for The Huffington Post. I’ve always viewed writing for Huffpo as a service and I’ve actually liked doing it for free. There’s been freedom in free, because you serve no one but your conscience and your inner master. Some things a person does should be like that. But when it comes to this acquisition, it’s the freedom thing that concerns me.

When I worked for NBC, I witnessed how an investigative producer tracking a story was stopped dead in his tracks by his own bosses. Seems that the trail he was tracking led to a company that was doing business with GE, and since GE owned NBC – they killed the story. I ran up against something like that, but not nearly as journalistically pure, while working on a story that later got an innocent man out of jail. While reporting it, I got some prosecutors mad. They had connections with the corporate leadership at NBC. The result wasn’t pretty when they dropped the hammer on me. So I wonder what happens when Huffpost tries to cover something the corporate overlords at AOL don’t like? Let me answer that question with another.

Have you ever seen a documentary called The Corporation? The thesis is that if a corporation was a person, it would be a sociopath.

Big-bigger-biggest isn’t necessarily better. I know you have to pay off your investors and Arianna Huffington had a few. I realize businesses have to grow and change. Bloomberg Businessweek has written that “the greatest business successes are often engineered by bold visionaries who altered industries.” Thing is, those visionaries don’t always marry off so well. Their suitors want to buy their success but can’t deal with their quirks.Take a look at AOL and Time Warner. eBay and Skype.

Big mergers and acquisitions can turn into corporate date rape. Ford bought Volvo, then sold it to the Chinese carmaker Geely. Ford also bought Jaguar and Land Rover and sold those brands to Tata Motors of India. When you start trading off a Swedish brand to a Chinese company, what does Volvo stand for anymore? Am I buying a Swedish-Chinese car? Of course, some big mergers do work. In 1965, Pepsi and Frito-Lay merged to form PepsiCo and they’ve been killing us with sugar, salt and carbs ever since, so at least that makes me feel good.

I hope Arianna can hang on to the Huffpost brand, which is rebellious, contrarian and yes, unabashedly progressive. The Skype guys tried to buy their company back from eBay, because eBay has no soul. Want proof? eBay allows puppy mills to list in its classifieds.  How’s that corporate sociopathic behavior working for ya?

Give it a couple years and Arianna might need to buy back her vision from AOL.

9 Comments on “Trouble in Huffpo Paradise”

  1. 1: Bruce LeBel said at 2:53 am on February 18th, 2011:

    I unsubscribed from HuffPo the moment I read of the acquisition by AOL.

    And I wonder how much of that 9 figure price Arianna is going to share with the writers like Lee who contributed the content that made HuffPo what it was. (Past tense intentional.)

  2. 2: Bob Ellal said at 7:05 am on February 18th, 2011:

    Hey, man–excellent, wry, trenchant and informative piece as usual (now that I’ve buttered you up–you got any sisters?).

    Seriously, back in the day working at a major insurer, I had access as a lowly writer to several levels of top brass. Bloody appalling–endless power plays that ruined careers–you know the drill. It made me think of the jockeying-for-power among the various Nazi hierarchies–Himmler, Goering and the boys.

    Which brings this a bit back on track: Mussolini’s definition of fascism: “Fascism is corporatism.” Not a big conspiracy nut but there are definitely parallels between then and now: corporations funding Hitler’s rise to power; corporations funding American candidates political campaigns. It becomes hard to detect a separation in the symbiosis.

    It’s a bit frightening. I’d move to a bunker in Idaho, but I already live there. I really have a first-class machine-gun nest. Big guns always impress the chicks.

  3. 3: Elizabeth Garsonnin said at 7:34 am on February 18th, 2011:

    (W)Right on!

  4. 4: keith silva said at 9:42 am on February 18th, 2011:

    In ’3rd World America’ Ms A. correctly bemoans falling US worker salaries: Yet her own HuffPo appropriates freely other’s work sans payment to them; now she’s sold her massive re-appropriation effort for 315million… Creative! (and disingenuous…

  5. 5: Lee Schneider said at 9:48 am on February 18th, 2011:

    Yes, very creative! So many great things have been built upon the back of free or cheap labor. If I were getting paid for this, I’d list them all here. Thanks for commenting, Keith. Nice to hear from you.

  6. 6: Lee Schneider said at 9:48 am on February 18th, 2011:

    Thanks for commenting!

  7. 7: Lee Schneider said at 9:50 am on February 18th, 2011:

    Is there wifi in your bunker? At least then you’ll be able to read The Huffington Post. Thanks for commenting, I appreciate it.

  8. 8: Lee Schneider said at 9:51 am on February 18th, 2011:

    Campaigning for a profit sharing plan would be a good thing – even if we all gave our mostly-symbolic $1 per article to causes. Class action suit, anybody?

  9. 9: SYD MEAD said at 2:14 pm on February 19th, 2011:

    IF YOU DON’T GET PAID, IT’S A HOBBY.