The Huffington Post | The New York Observer

HuffPo Knows What is Best for Books

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:10:58 -0400

In a column addressed to her "Dear Colleagues in Publishing," editor Amy Hertz of the new Huffington Post Books vertical lets everyone know How Things Will Be Around Here.

The most important pointer for said colleagues (as Gillian Reagan points out) is not to pitch book reviews. According to Hertz, book reviews are "conversation enders," and we live in "the age of engagement."

Rather, conversation should be started in the form of a sales pitch:

At some...

Tina's Giving vs. Arianna's Impact: A Philanthropy Vertical Smackdown!

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:54:44 -0400

Looks like Tina Brown's Daily Beast may be riding on Arianna Huffington's charitable coat tails with the launch of Giving Beast, a new vertical that encourages users to read blog posts and stories about cause-related news and opinion, then click on links and widgets to find out how to get involved. Global Philanthropy Group, a consulting service that has worked with Bono, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Sir Richard Branson, among others,...

New 'Impact' on Huffington Post

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:40:01 -0400

Arianna Huffington is launching a new section called 'Impact' on the Huffington Post tomorrow morning. In the new vertical, articles on hot-button issues (gay rights, homelessness, flooding in the Philippines) will include a widget to help readers "plot a course of action," if they want to donate to a cause, for example, according to the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Huffington has partnered with Causecast, a Santa Monica venture with both nonprofit and for-profit divisions,...

HuffBooks Vertical Launches

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:09:44 -0400

The Huffington Post's new "Books" vertical debuts today, writes Gillian Reagan.

On it, there's content from The New York Review of Books (a Huffington Post partner) and other features, like a book club called "Arianna's Reading."

According to the section's editor, Amy Hertz:

Books are alive and well, but everything around them is changing...while the Internet won't kill books, boredom, earnestness and despair just might.

One of the first links on the site is: "Napster for Books: The...

HuffPost Opens Books Section

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:46:13 -0400

As the Observer reported last month, The Huffington Post has been working on a books vertical. Today, on Oct. 5th, HuffPost Books went live. The new section has the site's usual amalgam of news, profiles, Q&As, and video--along with users' reviews and essays from the New York Review of Books, which is officially partnering with the site, as the Observer reported.

One NYRB piece on HuffPost's site is a 4,000-word...

HuffPo Names Greg Coleman, Former Yahoo-er, as President

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:30:52 -0400

Greg Coleman, the former executive vice president of global sales at Yahoo, has joined the Huffington Post as preisdent and chief revenue officer. Mr. Coleman, an AOL and magazine sales veteran, will be charged with monetizing all those eyeballs that check out the aggregator every day. HuffPo chief executive Eric Hippeau worked with Mr. Coleman as a board member at Yahoo. The search engine's sales revenues grew from $600 million to more than...

Huffington Post Partners With New York Review of Books, Gets a Penguin Editor; Also, a Book Club

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:28:48 -0400

On Oct. 5, The Huffington Post will launch a new books section with a perhaps unexpected partner: The New York Review of Books, according to Arianna Huffington. The site's newly minted editor, Amy Hertz, a Penguin editor at large under their Dutton division, will have to balance the fortnightly magazine's 5,000-word essays and thoughtful articles based on multiple publications with book reviews written by HuffPo readers, HuffPo co-founder editor in chief Ms. Huffington confirmed...

Zoom! Yum! New Internet 'Paper' to Cover Jetpacks, International Conflict, Food

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:44:10 -0400

Just when you thought the Internet couldn’t get any louder! Tomorrow brings the launch of the Faster Times, “a new type of newspaper for a new type of world.”
Modeled on the Huffington Post, the Faster Times is a combination of original content and aggregated links divided into about 15 sections, including business, politics, arts, food, sports, design and travel. Its staff, led by Faster Times’ founding publisher and...

New HuffPo CEO Hippeau Wants to Grow

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:06:10 -0400

By many measures, Eric Hippeau, the man who was named the new CEO of the Huffington Post on Monday, just got a dream job. He has a Web site with tiny overhead that has only burned through about $12 million in its first three and a half years online.

And that’s not all. According to the Web site, it has 21 million unique users every month. It’s the most-linked-to blog on the Internet, according...

Surprise! NYTimes.com, Jimmy Fallon, Twitter Are Top Webby Winners

Tue, 05 May 2009 10:43:33 -0400

NPR, NYTimes.com and NBC.com were among this year's top Webby Award winners. Organizers from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences announced the winners this morning, along with the results of The Webby People's Voice Awards.

The Guardian won the Webby for best newspaper Web site. It was a winner for three years in a row before losing to NYTimes.com last year (The Observer was also a nominee and an honoree for best...

Get Me Rewrite! Once Variety Ruled the Holywood Press, But Twittering Stars and Cutthroat Blogs Have Put Blood on Sunset Boulevard

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:39:10 -0400

On Monday, April 13, the actor Ashton Kutcher sent a message out to his fans using the microblogging tool Twitter.

“My dad always said 'I'll believe when I hear it from the horses mouth,'” was the message his subscribers received. “twitter is the horses mouth. no more 'well the news said ...'”

By Friday, April 17, Mr. Kutcher became the first “Twitterer” to attract a million readers. He beat CNN.com's continuous headline feed, also syndicated to...

Newser's Michael Wolff: Who's Got a News Fee? 'I'll Give It To Them for Free'

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:40:50 -0400

Last night, on April 20, Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair columnist and founder of Newser, was sitting on a chair—arms folded, legs crossed—on the third floor of the Time Warner Center while a downpour rumbled outside. Surrounded by flickering television screens, mobile phones and mp3 players in the "Samsung Experience" room, Bennett Zier, chief executive of Air America Media, asked him a question: "What do traditional media companies need to do to stay relevant?"...

Please Kill Fee Me: The Scary Rise of Celebrity Journalism Dilettantes

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:15:00 -0400

How much worse can things get for journalists?

Newspapers and magazines are closing; the ones that remain grow thinner by the week as if somehow cursed; freelance budgets are being slashed and staffers accustomed to taking it easy are being forced to write like their livelihoods depend on it. (Hint: They do.) The only thing worse than losing one of the few, cramped spots in a magazine's well is losing it to a celebrity—you know,...

Media Mob Sleeps With the Fishes

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:06:30 -0500

On July 6th, 2005, The Observer officially launched the Media Mob under editor Tom Scocca with a post that attempted—and failed—to introduce an awkward portmanteau word we thought would capture large media companies' incursions into the then-still novel medium of blogs. We called it (shudder) blogentrification, and described it as follows:

It starts with the ragtag pioneers, moving in with their funky friends and their bohemian pursuits, seeking life on the cheap in some desolate...