by Conor Friedersdorf
The Huffington Post is being acquired by AOL for $315 million.
The detail I found most interesting:
Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone.
(Obligatory Moviephone link.)
Here's Arianna Huffington's thoughts on the deal and a video interview the heads of both companies did with Kara Swisher.
What's my opinion? I suppose that I am agnostic. I'm not that familiar with the whole of AOL's media empire. But I'm very curious to see how this plays out, and hopeful that it will be a success. The same goes for The Daily and the merger between The Daily Beast and Newsweek (full disclosure: I've written for every enterprise named in this post save The Daily.) Everybody is trying to figure out what model is going to make money on the Web it's an exciting time to be in media, and every venture is another data point. The most interesting part of Huffington's vision is being a player in local news. There are a lot of places that could use that.