How Huffington Huffed, Puffed and Blew the Media Houses Down

The Huffington Post was to have three basic functions: blog, news aggregator with an attitude and place for premoderated comments. TIME.com

NVDL: This blog serves the same function, with a lesser emphasis on seeking feedback/comments.

clipped from www.time.com There is flattery, there is shameless flattery, and there are conversations with Arianna Huffington. She'll talk to old men about their libido, beautiful women about their intelligence, the unemployed about their talent and the wealthy about their artistic depth. In her hands, a compliment is the social equivalent of a Tomahawk missile, launched in stealth at a heavily researched target and perilously difficult to defend against. HuffPo, as it's known, has reached this level of prominence with 55 paid staffers, including Huffington. Twenty-eight of them are editorial, compared with more than 1,000 at the New York Times. Open the site on any given day and you will be greeted with copy from the Associated Press, contributions from unpaid writers, stories whose legwork was done by other news outlets and a smattering of entries from the site's five reporters.