Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

All hail the time of the bunny!

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

No one could have predicted…

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

You are here: Home / Laughing All the Way to the Bank

Laughing All the Way to the Bank

by | 46 Comments

This post is in: 

AOL is going to pay $300 million in cash, and $15 million in stock, for the Huffington Post, and Arianna Huffington will become the head of AOL’s media division. The Huffington Post had $31 million in revenue last year and barely made a profit. But if that math doesn’t make sense, consider this:

“This is a statement that the company is making investments, and in this case a bold investment, that fits right into our strategy,” Mr. Armstrong said in an interview Sunday. “I think this is going to be a situation where 1 plus 1 equals 11.”

Ms. Huffington and Mr. Armstrong began discussing the possibility of a sale only last month. They came to know each other well after they both attended a media conference in November and quickly discovered, as Ms. Huffington put it, “we were practically finishing each other’s sentences.” She added: “It was really amazing how aligned our visions were.”

I wonder who will quit first: the unpaid Post writers who aren’t making a dime from this deal, Arianna’s Hollywood buddies, or Arianna herself.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  1. 1.

    stuckinred

    Bobbie sue, whoa, whoa, she slipped away
    Billy joe caught up to her the very next day
    They got the money, hey
    You know they got away
    They headed down south and they’re still running today
    Singin go on take the money and run
    Go on take the money and run

    More lyrics: lyricsfreak.com/s/steve+miller/#share

  2. 2.

    Sly

    I wonder who will quit first: the unpaid Post writers who aren’t making a dime from this deal, Arianna’s Hollywood buddies, or Arianna herself.

    No matter what happens, the health writers will be fine. They’ll just put some pennies in a jug of water, shake it, and then watch as their pocket change turns into millions of dollars through the awesome power of bullshit.

  4. 4.

    salacious crumb

    Arianna for sure. HuffPost was going nowhere, and AOL had already been know for making bad decisions (example AOL-Time Warner). She will cash in and she will be out to make the next trash tabloid posing as liberal journalism

  5. 5.

    David

    As long as the geniuses who write the headlines designed to entice readers to click on a link concerning a celebrity don’t leave then Huffington Post should be fine.

  6. 6.

    Alex S.

    I thought that 1 plus 1 makes 10.

    So what’s next, Huffpost Corporate Mergers, Huffpost Selling Out or Huffpost Bankruptcy?

  9. 9.

    Nicole

    the unpaid Post writers who aren’t making a dime from this deal

    Oh, Arianna. Still Republican after all these years.

  11. 11.

    A Humble Lurker

    O\T
    Can we have a thread about what an insufferable moron Bill O’Reilly is, please? His interview with the President is already up on the intertubes and it needs BJ snark to accompany it like cheesy movies need MST3K 3000.

  14. 14.

    Benjamin Cisco

    __

    “This is a statement that the company is making investments, and in this case a bold investment, that fits right into our strategy,” Mr. Armstrong said in an interview Sunday. “I think this is going to be a situation where 1 plus 1 equals 11.”

    Ah, another gastritis victim. Imagine that.

  16. 16.

    rapier

    It’s a slezzy outfit. Maybe half their revenue comes from people paying for AOL dial up access. That would be mainly old people who think they have to pay to keep their membership in AOL and sometimes even the internet, even though most have cable internet.. I knew someone whose father paid thousands for AOL high speed internet even though there is no such thing. The company, such as it is has for years been based upon pure fraud. Their new efforts at creating local content are interesting but the fact is they place is one big crime.

  18. 18.

    El Tiburon

    AOL? Didn’t they die along with atari? And didn’t they almost kill Time-Warner?

    I admit to clicking on Huff-Po but my average stay is about 30 seconds to peruse headlines, I rarely read any stories. Also the boobies.

  19. 19.

    Shalimar

    I couldn’t get past this poor guy thinking so much like Arianna that he can finish her sentences. I would be contemplating suicide if I ever got that disease.

    edited to add:
    @El Tiburon: You go to Huffpost for boobies? You know, the internets are a wonderland of boobies. They’re everywhere. You really should find a better source so you get a higher quality product.

  21. 21.

    Denise Revis-Martin

    @Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:

    AOL still receives a significant amount of their revenue from people who are paying AOL for their Internet access.

    Surprisingly, many of these people aren’t actually using AOL dial-up. But they mistakenly believe that they have to pay AOL monthly charges to continue to use their @aol.com email address, even though they can readily access their AOL email on the web or through a standard email client.

    Sadly, AOL doesn’t tell these people that they don’t need to pay their monthly charges in order to get their email.

    As these people become more knowledgeable (or leave the internet), AOL’s revenue will decline, and they won’t be in a position to spend $300 million on deals like this.

  23. 23.

    A Humble Lurker

    @A Humble Lurker:

    Damn it. That should just be MST3K. Sorry. But my point still stands.

    And Arianna Huffington can suck it. I used to hang out on that site, and while I don’t generally see myself as incredibly perceptive, even I could tell there was something that didn’t smell right about that place. I remember her writing some stupid ass story with the title ‘Middle Class: Obama’s Just Not That Into You’ And she got on TRMS for it. I could have strangled her. Everything else that’s screwed up about that aside, who is this bitch to fashion herself as any kind of expert on the middle class? Sweet Fancy Moses.

  25. 25.

    different church-lady

    “This is a statement that the company is making investments, and in this case a bold investment, that fits right into our strategy still has gobs of cash and wants to waste it on hookers and blow,” Mr. Armstrong said in an interview Sunday.

    Fixed.

  26. 26.

    rikryah

    this merger needs GOvernment approval, hence the sudden interest in a Black section at Huffington Post.

  29. 29.

    nepat

    So the Arianna Huffington con is now complete. Pretend to be a liberal who speaks out on behalf of the poor while negotiating multi-million dollar deals for yourself. Remember her anti-SUV crusade when she got busted for traveling all over the place in private jets? And AOL? Really? Someone needs Sean Parker on speed dial.

  30. 30.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    AOL thrives on ignorance and stupidity, purchasing HuffPo is perfectly in line with their business model. I just cost them two more customers, both old people who have broadband and thought ‘AOL was the internet’. Both were shocked to learn that they had email addresses at their broadband providers that had email in them both, going went back several years…lol! Now they are happily sailing along online without being boxed in to the ‘AOL part’ of the internet. That and they were surprised to see all of the AOL crap that was eating up a load of system resources and how much their computers ran after purging that crap and the load of adware/spyware on their systems.

    Both are conservatives who had to have a liberal pull their heads out of their asses. Ok, I only got them part way out but it’s an improvement!

    AOL thrives on ignorance, the HuffPo purchase proves it.

  31. 31.

    Punchy

    “I think this is going to be a situation where 1 plus 1 equals 11.”

    With math skillz like that, I suspect he also thinks this online blog/”news” thang will make him eleventy bagillion ducats and free donuts.

  32. 32.

    daveNYC

    Arianna for sure. HuffPost was going nowhere, and AOL had already been know for making bad decisions (example AOL-Time Warner).

    Actually, that merger was a really good move by AOL. Just think about where they’d be if they hadn’t done the merger (and it was paid for in stock). Time Warner got the shaft on that one.

    And a deal like this one will most likely have a clause that Arianna has to stick around for some amount of time post-merger. That’s kind of usual for companies that have a single person who is identified with the brand. It’d be like someone buying Apple, but not making sure that Jobs stays in the house.

  34. 34.

    Jinchi

    I think this is going to be a situation where 1 plus 1 equals 11.

    Don’t most situations like that end up with someone going to jail?

  35. 35.

    xian

    AOL, my employer (though I am not speaking in any official capacity), is putting up $300m in cash, the rest in stock, so no, not a debt-leveraged deal. We actually have a lot of cash on hand, partly from selling off non-core assets, and I think also from the spinoff from Time-Warner.

  36. 36.

    Nicole

    Well, each side has its grifters. The Right has Palin and we have Huffington. We just insist on ours having a handle on grammar.

  37. 37.

    Citizen_X

    I think this is going to be a situation where 1 plus 1 equals 11.

    Well, that’ll fit right in with the rest of the “science” stories on Huffpo.

  39. 39.

    nepat

    @rikryah:

    The new black section I interpreted as more of an attempt to chip away at the core of Obama’s base – something that Huffington, DK, FDL, and the rest of the “progressives” have not been able to effectively do. It will essentially be a news aggregator for anti-Obama voices from the AA community, while providing air cover for charges of racism for the rest of the site.

  41. 41.

    azlib

    Price to earnings ratio of 10-1. Not bad. I suspect Arianna is the one laughing all the way to the bank on this one.

  43. 43.

    eemom

    @Anton Sirius:

    in contrast, Hamsher lackey Daydee sez it’s all good:

    I probably have a very unusual view of things, but pretty much everything I read on Huffington Post comes from their original reporting wing, and they have a growing staff in that department delivering very strong content. It’s good for progressive media in general to see a business model thriving, and while there are concerns about a general flattening of the online space that’s already happening, and this at least plants a flag on the left side. I expect them only to expand and wish them the best of luck.

    imo, Hamsher would KILL to be bought by the one of the big boys — even the skinny ghost of one like AOL.

  44. 44.

    different church-lady

    @Jinchi:

    Don’t most situations like that end up with someone going to jail?

    Sadly, I think most of them don’t.

  45. 45.

    Cris

    the unpaid Post writers who aren’t making a dime from this deal

    This bears repeating, over and over. Is it surprising that HuffPo is profitable when its primary product is produced by unpaid labor?

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks