By JEREMY W. PETERS and VERNE G. KOPYTOFF, The New York Times
The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.
The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.
The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation, areas that its chief executive, Tim Armstrong, views as vital to reversing a decade-long decline.
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.
By handing so much control over to Ms. Huffington and making her a public face of the company, AOL, which has been seen as apolitical, risks losing its nonpartisan image. Ms. Huffington said her politics would have no bearing on how she ran the new business.
The deal has the potential to create an enterprise that could reach more than 100 million visitors in the United States each month. For The Huffington Post, which began as a liberal blog with a small staff but now draws some 25 million visitors every month, the sale represents an opportunity to reach new audiences. For AOL, which has been looking for ways to bring in new revenue as its dial-up Internet access business declines, the millions of Huffington Post readers represent millions in potential advertising dollars.
It will be interesting to see if this is another AOL deal that is poisonous for both sides or whether AOL becomes the Fox News of the left.
March 8, 2012:
Arianna Huffington announced today that she was purchasing the Huffington Post and related properties from the creditors of the bankrupt AOL. Final terms were not announced but the purchase price was expected to be in the neighborhood of $2.5M.
By JEREMY W. PETERS and VERNE G. KOPYTOFF, The New York Times
The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.
The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.
The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation, areas that its chief executive, Tim Armstrong, views as vital to reversing a decade-long decline.
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.
By handing so much control over to Ms. Huffington and making her a public face of the company, AOL, which has been seen as apolitical, risks losing its nonpartisan image. Ms. Huffington said her politics would have no bearing on how she ran the new business.
The deal has the potential to create an enterprise that could reach more than 100 million visitors in the United States each month. For The Huffington Post, which began as a liberal blog with a small staff but now draws some 25 million visitors every month, the sale represents an opportunity to reach new audiences. For AOL, which has been looking for ways to bring in new revenue as its dial-up Internet access business declines, the millions of Huffington Post readers represent millions in potential advertising dollars.
There is a curfew in effect in Egypt, but thousands of protesters remain in the streets in Cairo, Suez, Alexandria and across the rest of the country. President Hosni Mubarak is expected to speak soon. Police might've fired tear gas at praying demonstrators. And Fox reported on how ICE arrested some immigrant sex offenders in Virginia.
Fox, CNN and MSNBC are all acquitting themselves better than they did the day Tunisia's government collapsed. All of them have reporters in Cairo, and are airing footage of the demonstrations on the streets. But none of them are reporting on the situation as compellingly as Al Jazeera English, which has reporters across the country. And if you're in the United States, you can probably only see Al Jazeera English online. If you're watching Al Jazeera, you're seeing uninterrupted live video of the demonstrations, along with reporting from people actually on the scene, and not "analysis" from people in a studio. The cops were threatening to knock down the door of one of its reporters minutes ago. Fox has moved on to anchor babies. CNN reports that the ruling party building is on fire, but Al Jazeera is showing the fire live.
In 4 days, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit will celebrate its tenth anniversary. We're organizing events and online activities to commemorate the day.
He is all the rage down here. His latest book is on the NYT best seller list, he has an hour each day on Faux News, he is best loved after Limbaugh, who is most loved of all. IMHO, he is an *ssh*le!
Somebody needs to catch him in a public washroom with an under-age tranny. Fast.
(Jeez you guys do come up with the real doozies, dontcha? )
Who the hell is this twat and how did he get the right to pollute the airwaves???????
...welly used the T word!...ha!...him and that nacy grace are robots...six million dollar man bad guy robots...I am SO waiting for thier faces to pop off...
NEW YORK — The Sun-Times Media Group, owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of suburban newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday, making it the fifth newspaper publisher to seek protection from creditors in recent months.
The step, brought on by a precipitous decline in advertising revenue, means both of Chicago's major daily newspapers are operating under bankruptcy protection. Tribune Co., the parent company of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 in December.
The Sun-Times Media Group, which filed in a Delaware court, said it will continue to operate its print and online properties. The company listed $479 million in assets and $801 million in debt. The largest unsecured creditors are newsprint vendors. Three are owed more than $1 million each.
The company has retained Rothschild Inc. to help with a possible sale of assets.
"We firmly believe that filing for Chapter 11 protection and exploring the potential sale of assets or new investment in the company offers us the best opportunity to protect our respected media properties for the long-term," Jeremy Halbreich, the company's interim chief executive, said in a statement.
The Sun-Times, the company's flagship newspaper, had a paid weekday circulation of about 313,000 as of September, ranking it 17th in the U.S.
The dire financial condition of Chicago's newspapers mirrors the situation in Philadelphia, where the publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News filed for bankruptcy protection in February.
Other cities with two daily newspapers have seen the industry's crisis whittle away competition this year. The Rocky Mountain News closed, leaving The Denver Post, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went online only, leaving The Seattle Times without a mainstream daily print rival.
