I sent this to HuffPo regarding the AIG Bonus obsession...

[Bread and Circus]

I thought HuffPo was a left leaning blog and online news outlet.



What’s up with this obsession with the AIG bonuses? This fake populism is not going to come of any good. If you all think this is going to help us embark on some road to transparency and accountability, dream on.



What’s going to happen is that in one way or another, this is just going end up being a distraction for the Obama administration if not just outright making him look bad. Even if Obama and Tim Geithner are 100% innocent of all wrong doing this fanning of the flames is just going to create confusion and a sense of Obama being part of the “gang that can’t shoot straight”.



This will only end up serving the right wing and the forces that keep things like health care from ever being reformed.



So, I have to ask the editors… why?



I just don’t buy this notion that you are going to be a part of solving a mystery that will somehow improve the position of progressive politics. Rather, this just seems like a fake feeding frenzy that is on par with the same sort of brain dead mainstream media tabloid journalism we reject when we visit blogs.



Be careful, because you are starting to look like what you are suppose to be an alternative to.



How about you guys do some investigative journalism to prevent the next scandal instead of bloviating about the last one?



Oh yeah, I forgot…that’s not what journalism is about anymore.

[ErinBerin84]

1. I don't mind that they're trying to cover the story

But I have noticed that HuffPost does try to use misleading headlines sometimes, just to get people to click on the story or something. Or they link to a story on a different blog that is actually an opinion, but present it as hard news. I don't know. The headlines are just really batty sometimes, I only checked it once earlier today, so I probably don't get the scope of what it's like right now.

[scribble]

2. Huffington Post? It's not a good progressive website

I am *very* down on Huffington post. They are glitteratii wolves in progressive sheep's clothing. Have you ever been glad-handed by a salesman who pretended to be your friend and to agree with you on whatever he thought you believed, but just wanted to sell you something? That's HuffPo. They're fakes.

1) HuffPo depends on Arianna's celebrity friends for too many political articles. Her celebrity friends don't know as much about politics as many DU'ers do, and many are as out of touch as most Republicans are.

2) HuffPo depends upon misleading headlines to attract visitor clicks.

3) Huffpo posts too much trivial gossip. Somebody needs to tell Arianna that We. Don't. Care.

4) No progressive site deletes reader comments as much as HuffPo does. While I understand why the delete trolls, spam, threats and flames, they should allow well-meant criticism of celebrity bloggers (and of the HuffPo site itself). Progressive visitors should not have to explain freedom of speech to the yuppies they apparently hire to read every post before it is allowed. Their comments sections are infested with Freeper/wingnut replies that always seem to be first, and never seem to get caught and deleted.

5) While Arianna has lately produced some good articles on Economics, they do a bad job in general at covering the news. HuffPo is big enough now and has enough social and professional connections to make a real journalistic contribution here -- and they just don't.

6) Because of Arianna's celebrity status, HuffPo is co-opting attention from other progressive political and news sites that really do the job she only pretends to do. I don't want Arianna speaking for me on radio or TV, or being consulted by business and government officials on what *I* think. She doesn't speak for me.

sc

[asjr]

3. I agree. Arianna has become Snow White's

stepmother.

[depakid]

4. Everyone's entitled to their opinion

I find the site informative and interesting.

[ihavenobias]

9. Agreed. Who cares if they cover celeb gossip stuff too? People can always SKIP it!

After all, they don't do it just to do it, I'm guessing it helps increase their views, exposure and therefore funding, dramatically.

And that means their relevant news stories and progressive commentary reaches a bigger audience.

[ErinBerin84]

10. I don't really care about the celeb stuff

But some gossipy political stuff, I feel like they just try to whip up a frenzy with their headlines. Like, I felt like Sam Stein was trying to make a huge drama out of the fact Ron Reagan was not invited to the stem cell event last week. I forget which headline they used, but they insinuated some big intentional snub. But in the actual article, Ron Reagan does not seem offended at all or seem to think it was personal, and said that his mother does not travel much. I don't know, things like that sort of bother me, the appearance of starting fights for fights sake. I realize that they need site traffic, but it's annoying. That said, I do think that they do valuable reporting as well.

[ihavenobias]

14. You have a good point. I think we both agree that we can just skip that as well

and that there is some valuable reporting and commentary as well.

:)

[ErinBerin84]

5. yeah

They have some good stuff, but it's often mixed in with gossipy stuff with misleading headlines. That's mostly what I take issue with. You have to look at things with a critical eye there, click on the links to see if they're leaving out anything from the article.

[scribble]

15. HuffPo is hurting us ...

Successful websites need to build communities of repeat visitors.

For instance, that's how DU works.

=-=-=-=-=

HuffPo bought some short-term success by inviting celebrities to write political posts on topics they didn't fully understand. Those "diary entries" were interesting in passing, but HuffPo is now several years old. That approach isn't working any more.

to survive longer than their celebrity postings can support, HuffPo needs to build an enthusiastic community of knowledgeable, repeat visitors. This principle is true for all websites. If a website turns off a visitor three or four times, that visitor never comes back (except by accident).

Nothing turns off a visitor faster than censoring his/her reply to a blog entry. HuffPo hires 20-something techies with no particular political knowledge to personally read each submitted comment/reply to an article, and decide whether or not to post that reply. I have information that HuffPo refuses a higher percentage of replies than does any other progressive website -- and especially refuse most comments submitted to their "celebrity" diary entries. That's a lot of visitors they should be adding to their community, that they are just throwing away today.

In contrast, DU survives (and thrives) by only lightly censoring posts here. When a new DU visitor sees his/her first post on a return visit, he/she is encouraged to return again. The next posts are better. Over time, repeat visitors become more knowledgeable politically and a lot more enthusiastic. By only lightly censoring posts, DU has built a great, very enthusiastic community of repeat visitors who post exclusive news items and incidentally post one of the best daily stock of short political videos on the web. Building Communities works.

By censoring posts, HuffPo is damaging its own visitor community.

By remaining a cliquish gossip-driven site, they aren't contributing as much as they claim that they are. By co-opting media attention, they make it harder for other, more original Progressives sites to attract. By just being in the way and refusing contributions from 'non celebrity' authors, they are damaging the whole Progressive political movement as well.

sc

[Bread and Circus]

13. LOL this was the other email I sent them today...exactly what you are stating

Overall, I really like Huffington Post. I have 2 concrete complaints. 1 is valid I think by any reasonable measure the other is subjective.

Problem 1:

Your headlines are often very alarmist and misleading. A lot of the times the headline doesn’t really match the article or piece that it is linked to. This seems like a system problem to me. Perhaps you reward writers for attention grabbing headlines? Look into this. It’s a complaint that’s been corroborated by others.

Problem 2:

Content changes to slowly for my taste. This is just a subjective opinion but I will include this for reference:

www.andrewsullivan.com --

18 Mar 2009 09:31 am
Teaching An Old Paper New Tricks
Jack Shafer gives the newly web-only 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer some advice: Users become habituated to Web sites that reward their habituation. One of the many reasons that the Drudge Report pulls so many users is that it's always changing. Compared with Drudge, the home pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post move at a pace that would bore a tectonic plate. I once asked the editor of a top newspaper's Web site if he had to rely on his own home page or the Drudge Report to stay on top of the news (breaking and otherwise), which would he pick? He said Drudge. It's a broadcast, not a publication. I learned this from the master, Drudge, himself. Wise he is. In Miami he lives. I think.

end email-----

P.S. Don't hound me for being and Andrew Sullivan fan. Even though he has a lot of right wing views, I like his principles.

[BuyingThyme]

6. You are way wrong. They are exposing the Dems as a status quo party.

More power to 'em.

[spanone]

7. the entire media is obsessed....

[spanone]

8. the entire media is obsessed....

[rvablue]

11. Keep in mind, Arianna's overreaching goal in life right now is driving traffic to her site..

nothing else.

It's called filling one's pockets and ego.

[Bread and Circus]

12. That's kind of what I'm wondering too.