The Huffington Post

Andrea Mitchell started it.

It was she who told viewers of NBC’s The Nightly News With Brian Williams on Thursday, Nov. 13, that Hillary Clinton “is under consideration to be secretary of state.”

Since then, nobody seems to have known what to think. But that hasn’t ground the Madame Secretary boomlet to a halt—on the contrary, it only accelerated it! Over the past few days, we’ve heard: Hillary is under consideration for the job. She’s been offered the job! She hasn’t been offered the job (which was only news because someone else had said she had).

Last night, we read that she had been offered the job, and not only that, she was going to accept it! More recently, it’s been “unclear,” but her husband is being vetted—that’s the news of the day for Nov.  read more »

Fast Company recently named Arianna Huffington one of the most influential women in Web 2.0. But might she be hogging the spotlight from other opinionated ladies?

That's what Jessica Wakeman, a former associate blog editor at the Huffington Post, claims in the national media watchgroup FAIR's November/December issue of Extra!. In her article, "Huffington Post Mutes Women's Voices," she noted an Extra! study that found out of the 13 featured blog posts on the Huffington Post home page, only one-fourth of them are usually written by women. Ms. Wakeman hasn't written about "women's political, societal and cultural issues" for the Huffington Post since April. Hmm ...  read more »

The Washington Post's Al Kamen reports that Barney, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush's dog, tried to bite a reporter from Reuters. (This comes via The Huffington Post's Media vertical.)

Writes Mr. Kamen:

Reuters television White House correspondent Jon Decker reports that President Bush's dog Barney, going on a walk this morning on the North Lawn, let his reaction to the news show.

He 'bit my right index finger this morning—as I reached down to pet him,' Decker said. The bite broke skin and the wound was bleeding enough to prompt White House physician Dr. Richard Tubb to treat Decker with antibiotics. He will also be getting a tetanus shot.

A Presidential pardon may be in order.

Late last month, The Huffington Post announced that media critic James Warren would bring his "On Magazines" column over from The Chicago Tribune.

In a release at the time, Mr. Warren said, "Like a dogged parole officer, the magazines column has trailed me for nearly three decades, no matter my day job. If I had a buck for every one I've written about which is no longer with us, I could fly business class to Beijing."  read more »

On Friday, we wrote about a particularly unflattering post about Anna Wintour on The Huffington Post. At the time, we wondered why the post existed at all—it consisted entirely of a grotesquely blown-up photo of the 58-year-old Vogue editor at a fashion show—and why it was on the site's Media vertical. Many commenters to the post were equally baffled. (Jezebel and Gawker subsequently wrote about the Huffington Post's post as well.)

An email to Arianna Huffington about the post and where it fits in with some thoughts she shared in her recent book, On Becoming Fearless, was answered by the site's editor, Roy Sekoff:  read more »

Let it be known that the Huffington Post—you know, Arianna Huffington's news aggregator and blog network that optimistically values itself at $200 million—isn't above tearing out a page from Star or a traffic-driving trick from Perez Hilton.

In an un-bylined post on the site's Media vertical headlined Anna Wintour Up Close (PHOTOS), we are treated to a particularly unflattering Associated Press photo of the Vogue editor at Thursday's Tommy Hilfiger show. It's a pretty textbook example of what many feminist bloggers refer to as "body snarking."

The scoop? Ms. Wintour, who is 58 years old, looks like a middle aged woman—with wrinkles and everything.  read more »

Last week, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote about Twitter, the kinda useful, sorta ubiquitous, sure to be short-lived new tool for journalists—and cellphone-enabled journalist-like individuals—who want to bring readers the world in 140-characters or less.

Mr. Kurtz called twittering "the digital equivalent of a sound bite, a throat-clearing, a terse observation or two for a cloistered community online."

If you're hoping to hear Fox News' Greta Van Susteren clear her throat online, you're out of luck: The On the Record host tells The Huffington Post's Danny Shea that Twittering may not be for her:

I'm not sold on it yet... I have so much going—I have a webcam, I have GretaWire, I have Greta LiveWire which is my internet show that I do every night between 9:45 and 9:50, I'm now doing the Strategy Room, I've got my pictures, my video...remember I told you it's that hairline [between being digital and being crazy]? Twitter may be it...

It also sounds mildly obscene. Am I the only one who thinks, like, Twittering... I don't know. Do you Twitter? It's like, I thought we had a don't ask, don't tell policy!  read more »

Verena Von Pfetten, the living editor of The Huffington Post who chose to live-blog The Huffington Post Oasis for The Huffington Post, has had enough of live-blogging.

"I've given up on the liveblogging because I've got waaaaay too much other shit to do. But it was fun while it lasted," she wrote in an e-mail.

She's moved onto other assignments for her Living Section, but it hasn't stopped the media celebs, exhausted by the slim pickings at the "Media Spa" in Media Pavilion 4 and the Captain Morgan lounge in Media Pavilion 2, from dropping by. Charlie Rose and Katie Couric are the most recent dinosaurs who traveled out of the media perimeter at the Pepsi Center for their own Ayurvedic consultations and free samples of Pangea Organics Egyptian Geranium with Adzuki Bean & Cranberry Facial Scrub.

DENVER—On Aug. 25, The New York Times’ chief political reporter, Adam Nagourney, was looking for a pair of seats for an interview in a sawdust-ridden tent in the parking lot of Denver’s basketball arena that served as the paper’s media workspace.

The Times wound up bringing so many staffers to this event (60!) that nearly every seat in its space was occupied in that area; he walked over to Bloomberg News, where there were another 30 workstations set up.

The thing about the conventions is that so many reporters come to them. The result is that it’s rare for anyone to write anything important.  read more »

Is the Huffington Post's media and special projects editor Rachel Sklar giving up media criticism for a career as a coffeehouse chanteuse? Heck, if Portfolio's Matt Cooper could be named Washington's Funniest Celebrity (a decade ago, back when there was something to laugh about in that town), anything's possible.

In a video Ms. Sklar posted on YouTube, the Eat the Press editor performs a parody of Don McLean's "American Pie" with Lisa Loeb. In lyrics she wrote herself, Ms. Sklar sings about the joys and fears of summer camp to co-promote the book Camp Camp and Camp Lisa, Ms. Loeb's latest CD.  read more »

Today on the Huffington Post, Ben Cohen interviews National Magazine Award-winning Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi.

Back in April, Mr. Taibbi got into a spat with another HuffPo writer, novelist Erica Jong, that hinged mostly on his description of Hillary Clinton's "flabby arms." In the interview with Mr. Cohen, Mr. Taibbi explains why he chooses to write about his subjects' physical flaws:

Um ... it's funny? (Laughs) That's one thing. ... You know, I make these caricatures of people, and a lot of it sure is gratuitous, and on some level I am trying to be funny, but I'm also trying to make it an easier read for some of the people who maybe aren't so interested in politics.  read more »

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This was a tough weekend for a certain segment within the media community, but together, they got through it.

It started out with excitement on Friday: A journalistic fact-finding mission to Las Vegas. But even before the plane took off, some key members of the expedition almost didn't make it. Thankfully, they arrived safely and twittered word that others had arrived as well (perhaps a bit blurry), despite the fact that the trip's sponsors did not pay for their transportation to the airport.  read more »

During the flight, something happened on the ground involving someone in media, which they agreed was

If you're finding your RSS feed a little thin today, that may be because your favorite media and lifestyle bloggers are away on an important reporting assignment. In Las Vegas. Paid for by the nice folks at Thrillist.  read more »

Who was the big media star of the weekend? The Huffington Post's citizen journalist extraordinaire Mayhill Fowler, of course! After her rope line "interview" with Bill Clinton made headlines, Ms. Fowler has found herself at the center of a journalistic ethics-new-new-new media kerfuffle.

After the jump, a snapshot of Ms. Fowler's big weekend (as compiled with the help of the redoubtable Jim Romenesko):  read more »

James Rainey at the L.A. Times—the embattled L.A. Times!—scored the first interview with 61-year-old Mayhill Fowler, that dogged citizen journalist of the Huffington Post.

No, wait! She's not a journalist! And she doesn't want her sources—like Bill Clinton who told her on Monday that Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum was a scumbag—to know that either.  read more »

Hilary Rosen, who was once chief of the Recording Industry Association of American, has been named political director and Washington editor at large of the Huffington Post, according to a press release. "I'm delighted to welcome Hilary to the team," Arianna Huffington is quoted as saying. "With her experience in the power corridors of Washington, D.C., and her extensive network of contacts, Hilary will be a driving force in taking HuffPost's political coverage to the next level." Ms. Rosen is touted for her connections and knowledge of Washington politics; she is not a journalist.

Ms. Rosen's name has been synonymous with record labels' struggles with so-called digital piracy. When she stepped down from the RIAA in 2003, CNet's John Borland wrote, "Hilary Rosen has presided over a transformation of the organization that has matched the turmoil of the music industry since her ascension in 1998. Once a trade organization little known outside music and policy circles, the RIAA has become a household word known for its vigorous prosecution of online piracy, and its role as the nemesis of file-swapping services from Napster to Kazaa."  read more »

A little after 6 p.m. at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Condé Nast president Richard Beckman was sharing a drink—vodka, olives—with Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend. The two were discussing the same thing everyone in the lobby of Jazz at Lincoln Center at the Time Warner Center was talking about: What the National Magazine Awards can do, or not do, for a magazine.  read more »

How much is a group blog and news aggregator worth these days? According to an unnamed source "who was briefed on discussions but was not permitted to speak for attribution" in a New York Times article about The Huffington Post today: "the company has at least looked at the value of the site if it were put up for sale, and a figure around $200 million was used."  read more »

Back in September, The Observer wrote about how Hillary Clinton's campaign had forged a surprisingly friendly relationship with the Democratic netroots by carefully feeding them scoops and nuggets of information. That strategy, we reported, was masterminded largely by Peter Daou, who runs the campaign's internet outreach.

Today comes perhaps the apotheosis of that phenomenon, as Mr. Daou takes to The Huffington Post to promote a new Web video and Web site on behalf of the Clinton campaign...