Arianna Huff-N-Stuff Is Open For Business...
Howard Kurtz has a good piece in the WaPo today on the launch of Arianna Huffinton’s blog site called "Huffington Post". The former candidate for governor of California, and all around snooty pain-in-the-ass has decided that she needs to hop on the bandwagon of the blogosphere. (Hat-Tip to Instapundit for the link to the Kurtz piece.)
Normally, I would allow my other-half handle a story like this. Many people know that she defends bloggers as ardently as she defends the troops, but she’s not feeling too hot today. Finals are really getting to her, so it falls to me to handle this. I do apologize for the length. A thorough fisking of this requires about 2200 words.
http://www.instapundit.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
The essence of blogging has been the one-man band, the big mouth in the basement, the pajama-clad pontificator taking on the media establishment.
Now Arianna Huffington, who knows something about seizing the spotlight, wants to change that. She is launching today a 300-person blog, the Huffington Post featuring lots of her famous showbiz friends, that could redefine the nature of online commentary, or at least bring her another 15 minutes.
Her marquee names -- Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Geffen, Rob Reiner, Albert Brooks, Bill Maher, Larry David -- aren't exactly hurting for ways to get their message out.
On the contrary, where is the formal education, or even common-sense involved with people like this. These are Hollywood stars, and movers and shakers. If these people are going to be commenting on the vacuum-headed affairs of Hollywood, or California, then they might make it. The moment these people stick their toes in the water of politics, they may lose a few toes from the bloggers that have been handing their ilk their heads for years.
"The great thing about blogging is that your thoughts don't have to have a beginning, middle and end," says Huffington, arguing that famous folks are usually too busy to craft an op-ed piece. "You can just put a thought out there in the cultural bloodstream."
Arianna misses a key point about blogging. It is something that I learned quickly, and that Marcie learned quickly. Keep it simple, but make your point! You do have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end in an op-ed piece. And I’m sorry that famous folks can’t find time in their vacuous lives to put together a simple op-ed piece.
(Here’s something to gnaw on: I am up 20 out of 24 hours in a day. I work 50+ hours a week. I maintain a relationship, and I still find time to sit down and blog; sometimes as often as three or four times a day, and each one goes beyond 800 words, on average. I have been known to pontificate to the tune of over 2200 words. Blogs, for me, take little time to type, but lots of time to research.)
Huffington's Hollywood pals -- who also include such writers and producers as David Mamet, Norman Lear, Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin -- are just the neon attractions. She is also touting Walter Cronkite, Gary Hart, Arthur Schlesinger, Mort Zuckerman, Vernon Jordan and Bobby Kennedy Jr. And while the blog is heavy on left-wingers, she has reached out to the right, luring the likes of John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, Tony Blankley of the Washington Times and National Review's David Frum.
Yes, she has reached out to the right. But she only did so that she could honestly say that she is "fair and balanced", which is anything but the truth. As the MSM has it’s "token conservatives" on their talking-heads shows, Arianna has her "token right-center" columnists. But you can’t gain readers by flooding your bandwidth with a bunch of those on the Left, and hold up two or three people and say that you’re "balanced".
Says political activist Laurie David, wife of the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star: "Early every morning, we're at the kitchen table reading the papers, and within three minutes one of us is screaming. This is going to be a channel for that."
In other words, many of these people are going to take what they read, and just go online and rant. Again, another mistake by Arianna. Ranting is a nice distraction from time to time; it’s even fun on a slow weekend, but it doesn’t get you readers. People are turning to blogs for information and insightful commentary. Not a Michael Savage-like frothing rant. And I am afraid she might have a few of her "bloggers" that might resort to such writing just to fill a void.
Beatty says the venture "holds out the possibility that the horrifying danger of media consolidation may be ameliorated." He says Huffington will provide a forum "not owned by the New York Times, News Corp., General Electric, Disney, Viacom, The Washington Post, Tribune Media, Knight Ridder, Gannett and the like" and that smart writers "will have no fear of being edited or fired for views that might go against the interests of the publisher."
In other words, unless Arianna says you’re gone, there is no accountability. I hope Arianna’s aware that if there is no accountability, she will lose readers. Bloggers depend on their readers. Marcie and I are center-right (actually we’re more to the right than to center) and we know that if we screw up once—and it only takes once—we will be held up for scrutiny if we don’t correct our mistakes. Bloggers, right now, have far more credibility than the MSM has right now.
At the White House Correspondents' dinner, Huffington invited several media attendees to join her site. No one is promised a dime.
Blog mistress is only the latest incarnation for Huffington, who has been a Republican activist (as a GOP congressman's wife), Democratic activist (she backed John Kerry), Comedy Central bedmate of Al Franken, syndicated columnist, author, anti-SUV crusader and gadfly candidate for California governor (she got 0.6 percent of the vote after a last-minute pullout).
She envisions the blog as a big dinner party, with chatter "about politics and books and art and music and food and sex."
So, in other words, reading her site is like attending the high-fallooting Hollywood parties where we can hob-nob with the big-wigs without actually having to rub elbows? How much more superior can she act? We’re the little people, and we should just read and agree? It doesn’t work that way. People read and make decisions on their own, and when it comes to the realm of politics and current events, no one cares about a Peking Duck recipe, or the fact that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is wearing a gorgeous gown that costs as much as my house payment. We want insightful commentary, and we want intelligent analysis.
Huffington insists her effort isn't just about the boldface names; she's lined up some college kids and a friend's 11-year-old daughter. "My dream is that we'll create new blogging stars," she says.
I can’t condemn her for this. Granted, I’m interested to see what the 11-year old has to say, but I’ll not berate her for looking to the youth for new talent. As many of you know, Marcie is young. She is only 18-years old, and is a first year college student. Anyone who has challenged her knows that she is more intelligent than many giver her credit for, and is wise well beyond her years. She still has a lot to learn in life, but I’ll put her up against any of the yahoos on Arianna’s site, and I’ll walk away with a confidant smile on my face that she can eat them alive.
Huffingtonpost.com has a dozen investors, from her partner Ken Lerer, a former AOL Time Warner executive, to Larry David. The site, which has seven paid staffers, including a former Matt Drudge researcher, will sell advertising, and Tribune Media plans to syndicate weekly highlights.
An advance peek at the early postings provides the flavor of the dialogue. When Cronkite proposed a Democratic convention to hammer out what the party stands for, labor leader Andy Stern wrote: "Walter, if it is a repetition of the last convention, we should proceed with extreme caution!" Lear was blunt: "I cringe for that great body of voters every time I hear them disparaged -- 'Can't they see they're voting against their own self-interest?' -- by us Democrats, liberals, progressives, whatever we are calling ourselves at the moment."
Radio host and "Simpsons" voice Harry Shearer moderates an "Eat the Press" section, saying: "We've taken off the menu both the 'gee, we did the horserace story again too often during the campaign' dishes and the extra-salty 'they're biased against the left/they're biased against the right' stews you may have been gorging on lately."
Though I like the Simpsons, this section of her site sounds positively boring. It sounds like Shearer is going to try and walk the walk, but I’m not sure if he can truly walk an absolutely unbiased line. And on top of that, do we really need someone pointing out the already over-hyped stories the MSM seems content with ramming down the public’s throats?
"M*A*S*H" creator Larry Gelbart writes: "Again, the media lends itself to becoming weapons of mass distraction, reveling in Laura Bush's potty mouth, giving her jokes equal time with the fresh hostage taking in lraq, a tsunami of suicide bombings, the faith-biased initiative to kill the filibuster (aborting the Constitution being acceptable), and Mr. Excitement's less than pressing press conference."
Dirty pool, old man, and this is what I am afraid will be the norm on Arianna’s site. Laura Bush did not have a "potty mouth", and I don’t recall a new hostage being taken in Iraq the night of that dinner. I remember one being grabbed two days before the dinner. I believe it was an Australian man that was working on the reconstruction effort. (Again, a lesson here: Keep your facts straight, Larry, and try to stay relevant.) The efforts to end the illegal filibuster have been well-documented by those in the blogosphere that are leading that fight. Ours, among those sites.
Laurie David, who joined Huffington in the 2003 anti-SUV campaign, says that "we were ridiculed by the media," even though hybrid cars are now hot. "The Huffington Post is going to balance the power out there that the media has had forever."
What a dumb-@$$. The balance of power has shifted already. Bloggers provided that shift with five nice, neat little heads on our walls, including three very large people in the MSM. (For those not keeping score, like Ms. David, those heads would be Howell Raines, Dan Rather, and Eason Jordan) Why do you think that subscriptions to newspapers have been going down, and the ratings amongst the cable networks are down in comparison to FOX News? It’s because people in the MSM, and their funny Hollywood cohorts can’t seem to tell the truth. They state what they believe is the truth, but it really is nothing but opinion, and the sheeple of the nation are just lapping it up. What they do is a disservice to the nation, and an insult to the people of this nation.
The venture comes as others in cyberspace are trying to figure out how to make money. Novelist and blogger Roger L. Simon is forming Pajamas Media, an alliance of 170 blogs that hopes to sell advertising by offering first-person coverage and video of events around the world.
We would love to get in on that, however, we don’t travel much, and Arizona is a pretty boring state. No one is going to give a rip about what we have to say about this state, unless we’re bringing up a national issue that is connected to the state, like the Minutemen.
Will Huffington's blog make news, or just be a collection of occasional posts by Very Important People who can't really be candid without jeopardizing their lucrative ventures?
The best blogs, love 'em or hate 'em, have an unmistakable voice; this will be a cacophony of voices. It's an open question whether the scribblings of the rich and influential can be as compelling as those of previously obscure people who are now online stars.
I sense that Arianna is about to find out how difficult this venture is going to be. There are a lot of egos behind the scenes, and quite a few that are rumored to "not play well with others". But Kurtz is right on his final points. Most blogs do have a very unique voice. I like to inject a bit of wit and sarcasm into my writings because I’m not above an off-color comment when and where it’s necessary to make a point. My other-half, Marcie, is as proper as she can be. No contractions, little slang, and she is to the point. Our regular readers like the voices we utilize.
And I’m not so sure that the scribblings of those in Hollywood will be enough to keep the site afloat. Her site might become the blogosphere’s version of Air America.
But the stars of the blogosphere (and no, neither of us consider ourselves on that level...yet) work their butts off, and have a regular group of readers that appreciate their style, their stories, and their opinions. With so many people already not happy over the Hollywood crowds for spouting off about things they have no clue over, Arianna’s site may not last long when push comes to shove. Sure, it will be a curiousity read in the beginning, but it’s hard to say whether she and her "bloggers" can last in the realm of ideas.
Publius II
Howard Kurtz has a good piece in the WaPo today on the launch of Arianna Huffinton’s blog site called "Huffington Post". The former candidate for governor of California, and all around snooty pain-in-the-ass has decided that she needs to hop on the bandwagon of the blogosphere. (Hat-Tip to Instapundit for the link to the Kurtz piece.)
Normally, I would allow my other-half handle a story like this. Many people know that she defends bloggers as ardently as she defends the troops, but she’s not feeling too hot today. Finals are really getting to her, so it falls to me to handle this. I do apologize for the length. A thorough fisking of this requires about 2200 words.
http://www.instapundit.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
The essence of blogging has been the one-man band, the big mouth in the basement, the pajama-clad pontificator taking on the media establishment.
Now Arianna Huffington, who knows something about seizing the spotlight, wants to change that. She is launching today a 300-person blog, the Huffington Post featuring lots of her famous showbiz friends, that could redefine the nature of online commentary, or at least bring her another 15 minutes.
Her marquee names -- Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Geffen, Rob Reiner, Albert Brooks, Bill Maher, Larry David -- aren't exactly hurting for ways to get their message out.
On the contrary, where is the formal education, or even common-sense involved with people like this. These are Hollywood stars, and movers and shakers. If these people are going to be commenting on the vacuum-headed affairs of Hollywood, or California, then they might make it. The moment these people stick their toes in the water of politics, they may lose a few toes from the bloggers that have been handing their ilk their heads for years.
"The great thing about blogging is that your thoughts don't have to have a beginning, middle and end," says Huffington, arguing that famous folks are usually too busy to craft an op-ed piece. "You can just put a thought out there in the cultural bloodstream."
Arianna misses a key point about blogging. It is something that I learned quickly, and that Marcie learned quickly. Keep it simple, but make your point! You do have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end in an op-ed piece. And I’m sorry that famous folks can’t find time in their vacuous lives to put together a simple op-ed piece.
(Here’s something to gnaw on: I am up 20 out of 24 hours in a day. I work 50+ hours a week. I maintain a relationship, and I still find time to sit down and blog; sometimes as often as three or four times a day, and each one goes beyond 800 words, on average. I have been known to pontificate to the tune of over 2200 words. Blogs, for me, take little time to type, but lots of time to research.)
Huffington's Hollywood pals -- who also include such writers and producers as David Mamet, Norman Lear, Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin -- are just the neon attractions. She is also touting Walter Cronkite, Gary Hart, Arthur Schlesinger, Mort Zuckerman, Vernon Jordan and Bobby Kennedy Jr. And while the blog is heavy on left-wingers, she has reached out to the right, luring the likes of John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, Tony Blankley of the Washington Times and National Review's David Frum.
Yes, she has reached out to the right. But she only did so that she could honestly say that she is "fair and balanced", which is anything but the truth. As the MSM has it’s "token conservatives" on their talking-heads shows, Arianna has her "token right-center" columnists. But you can’t gain readers by flooding your bandwidth with a bunch of those on the Left, and hold up two or three people and say that you’re "balanced".
Says political activist Laurie David, wife of the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star: "Early every morning, we're at the kitchen table reading the papers, and within three minutes one of us is screaming. This is going to be a channel for that."
In other words, many of these people are going to take what they read, and just go online and rant. Again, another mistake by Arianna. Ranting is a nice distraction from time to time; it’s even fun on a slow weekend, but it doesn’t get you readers. People are turning to blogs for information and insightful commentary. Not a Michael Savage-like frothing rant. And I am afraid she might have a few of her "bloggers" that might resort to such writing just to fill a void.
Beatty says the venture "holds out the possibility that the horrifying danger of media consolidation may be ameliorated." He says Huffington will provide a forum "not owned by the New York Times, News Corp., General Electric, Disney, Viacom, The Washington Post, Tribune Media, Knight Ridder, Gannett and the like" and that smart writers "will have no fear of being edited or fired for views that might go against the interests of the publisher."
In other words, unless Arianna says you’re gone, there is no accountability. I hope Arianna’s aware that if there is no accountability, she will lose readers. Bloggers depend on their readers. Marcie and I are center-right (actually we’re more to the right than to center) and we know that if we screw up once—and it only takes once—we will be held up for scrutiny if we don’t correct our mistakes. Bloggers, right now, have far more credibility than the MSM has right now.
At the White House Correspondents' dinner, Huffington invited several media attendees to join her site. No one is promised a dime.
Blog mistress is only the latest incarnation for Huffington, who has been a Republican activist (as a GOP congressman's wife), Democratic activist (she backed John Kerry), Comedy Central bedmate of Al Franken, syndicated columnist, author, anti-SUV crusader and gadfly candidate for California governor (she got 0.6 percent of the vote after a last-minute pullout).
She envisions the blog as a big dinner party, with chatter "about politics and books and art and music and food and sex."
So, in other words, reading her site is like attending the high-fallooting Hollywood parties where we can hob-nob with the big-wigs without actually having to rub elbows? How much more superior can she act? We’re the little people, and we should just read and agree? It doesn’t work that way. People read and make decisions on their own, and when it comes to the realm of politics and current events, no one cares about a Peking Duck recipe, or the fact that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is wearing a gorgeous gown that costs as much as my house payment. We want insightful commentary, and we want intelligent analysis.
Huffington insists her effort isn't just about the boldface names; she's lined up some college kids and a friend's 11-year-old daughter. "My dream is that we'll create new blogging stars," she says.
I can’t condemn her for this. Granted, I’m interested to see what the 11-year old has to say, but I’ll not berate her for looking to the youth for new talent. As many of you know, Marcie is young. She is only 18-years old, and is a first year college student. Anyone who has challenged her knows that she is more intelligent than many giver her credit for, and is wise well beyond her years. She still has a lot to learn in life, but I’ll put her up against any of the yahoos on Arianna’s site, and I’ll walk away with a confidant smile on my face that she can eat them alive.
Huffingtonpost.com has a dozen investors, from her partner Ken Lerer, a former AOL Time Warner executive, to Larry David. The site, which has seven paid staffers, including a former Matt Drudge researcher, will sell advertising, and Tribune Media plans to syndicate weekly highlights.
An advance peek at the early postings provides the flavor of the dialogue. When Cronkite proposed a Democratic convention to hammer out what the party stands for, labor leader Andy Stern wrote: "Walter, if it is a repetition of the last convention, we should proceed with extreme caution!" Lear was blunt: "I cringe for that great body of voters every time I hear them disparaged -- 'Can't they see they're voting against their own self-interest?' -- by us Democrats, liberals, progressives, whatever we are calling ourselves at the moment."
Radio host and "Simpsons" voice Harry Shearer moderates an "Eat the Press" section, saying: "We've taken off the menu both the 'gee, we did the horserace story again too often during the campaign' dishes and the extra-salty 'they're biased against the left/they're biased against the right' stews you may have been gorging on lately."
Though I like the Simpsons, this section of her site sounds positively boring. It sounds like Shearer is going to try and walk the walk, but I’m not sure if he can truly walk an absolutely unbiased line. And on top of that, do we really need someone pointing out the already over-hyped stories the MSM seems content with ramming down the public’s throats?
"M*A*S*H" creator Larry Gelbart writes: "Again, the media lends itself to becoming weapons of mass distraction, reveling in Laura Bush's potty mouth, giving her jokes equal time with the fresh hostage taking in lraq, a tsunami of suicide bombings, the faith-biased initiative to kill the filibuster (aborting the Constitution being acceptable), and Mr. Excitement's less than pressing press conference."
Dirty pool, old man, and this is what I am afraid will be the norm on Arianna’s site. Laura Bush did not have a "potty mouth", and I don’t recall a new hostage being taken in Iraq the night of that dinner. I remember one being grabbed two days before the dinner. I believe it was an Australian man that was working on the reconstruction effort. (Again, a lesson here: Keep your facts straight, Larry, and try to stay relevant.) The efforts to end the illegal filibuster have been well-documented by those in the blogosphere that are leading that fight. Ours, among those sites.
Laurie David, who joined Huffington in the 2003 anti-SUV campaign, says that "we were ridiculed by the media," even though hybrid cars are now hot. "The Huffington Post is going to balance the power out there that the media has had forever."
What a dumb-@$$. The balance of power has shifted already. Bloggers provided that shift with five nice, neat little heads on our walls, including three very large people in the MSM. (For those not keeping score, like Ms. David, those heads would be Howell Raines, Dan Rather, and Eason Jordan) Why do you think that subscriptions to newspapers have been going down, and the ratings amongst the cable networks are down in comparison to FOX News? It’s because people in the MSM, and their funny Hollywood cohorts can’t seem to tell the truth. They state what they believe is the truth, but it really is nothing but opinion, and the sheeple of the nation are just lapping it up. What they do is a disservice to the nation, and an insult to the people of this nation.
The venture comes as others in cyberspace are trying to figure out how to make money. Novelist and blogger Roger L. Simon is forming Pajamas Media, an alliance of 170 blogs that hopes to sell advertising by offering first-person coverage and video of events around the world.
We would love to get in on that, however, we don’t travel much, and Arizona is a pretty boring state. No one is going to give a rip about what we have to say about this state, unless we’re bringing up a national issue that is connected to the state, like the Minutemen.
Will Huffington's blog make news, or just be a collection of occasional posts by Very Important People who can't really be candid without jeopardizing their lucrative ventures?
The best blogs, love 'em or hate 'em, have an unmistakable voice; this will be a cacophony of voices. It's an open question whether the scribblings of the rich and influential can be as compelling as those of previously obscure people who are now online stars.
I sense that Arianna is about to find out how difficult this venture is going to be. There are a lot of egos behind the scenes, and quite a few that are rumored to "not play well with others". But Kurtz is right on his final points. Most blogs do have a very unique voice. I like to inject a bit of wit and sarcasm into my writings because I’m not above an off-color comment when and where it’s necessary to make a point. My other-half, Marcie, is as proper as she can be. No contractions, little slang, and she is to the point. Our regular readers like the voices we utilize.
And I’m not so sure that the scribblings of those in Hollywood will be enough to keep the site afloat. Her site might become the blogosphere’s version of Air America.
But the stars of the blogosphere (and no, neither of us consider ourselves on that level...yet) work their butts off, and have a regular group of readers that appreciate their style, their stories, and their opinions. With so many people already not happy over the Hollywood crowds for spouting off about things they have no clue over, Arianna’s site may not last long when push comes to shove. Sure, it will be a curiousity read in the beginning, but it’s hard to say whether she and her "bloggers" can last in the realm of ideas.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 1:57 PM
2 Comments:
Sounds more like a message board than a blog.
Checked it out. Not that impressed. Pawning a bunch of Hollywood blowhards as serious political commentators.
My predictio nis the the HOllywood set, for the most part, will stay out of the political fray. The rest will be discredited quickly as overly emotional windbags.
That's too bad. Some of them I like quite a bit. Larry David is great and I've always admired John Cusack's work. I even think Ellen Degeneres is funny.
Not for long probably...
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