What? You already knew this? Then you were ahead of the U.S. judicial system, which had to spend the last year on a silly class-action suit brought by a former Huffington Post contributor.

Jonathan Tasini, who compared himself and other unpaid HuffPo writers to “modern-day slaves,” was demanding a third of the $315 million Arianna Huffington and her backers got when they sold the company to AOL last year. The logic: He helped build the site up, and, well …

Not really any more logic than that, really. Tasini and other contributors agreed to write for free from the get-go.

U.S. District Judge John Koeltl has a 24-page decision dismissing Tasini’s complaint with prejudice, and I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post. But I’m not suggesting you read it. Here’s the common-sense essence:

No one forced the plaintiffs to give their work to The Huffington Post for publication and the plantiffs candidly admit that they did not expect compensation … Quite simply, the plaintiffs offered a service and the defendants offered exposure in return, and the transaction occurred exactly as advertised.

Any questions? Right. So here’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers:

huffington post blogging case

Berry, who had been Huffpo’s chief technical officer, stepped back from day-to-day duties in November; at the time, the company said he’d be “working closely” with Arianna Huffington “on strategy and expansion priorities.”

Now Berry says he will be leaving in February — which happens to be a year after the AOL/Huffpo deal was announced. Berry will be working on Rebel Mouse, which he described to the New York Observer as a “social platform,” and will also work on a start-up incubator.

As the Observer notes, the move will reunite Berry with a good chunk of Huffpo’s senior team — co-founders Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti, former CEO Eric Hippeau and former ad chief Greg Coleman. Most of that group left Huffpo as soon as the AOL deal closed.

Peretti, who now runs Buzzfeed, a son-of-Huffpo aggregator/news site with a flair for social media, credited Berry with much of Huffpo’s success, via a Twitter blessing:

When Paul Berry joined HuffPost had 3M UVs, today the site has 120M million & he deserves LOTS of credit for that growth

— Jonah Peretti (@peretti) January 10, 2012

[Shutterstock/Kutlayev Dmitry]

In a deal that was struck some time ago and is close to fruition, BermanBraun is prepping three major Web properties for AOL that will focus on pets, men and, interestingly, the weather.

After I inquired, AOL confirmed that the Hollywood production company — headed by former Yahoo and ABC exec Lloyd Braun and former Paramount exec Gail Berman — will debut the trio of sites around March. The new sites will use rich features and a slick design to attract premium advertisers.

The pair will jointly sell the advertising, but the sites themselves will be operated by BermanBraun in cooperation with AOL’s media unit, the Huffington Post Media Group. The deal was struck in late 2010, before AOL bought the Huffington Post for $300 million in January of this year.

While AOL has partnered with many outside sites, this will be the most prominent one since that acquisition.

Since then, much of the new content development on AOL has been aimed at drastically increasing the number of sites with that brand. There have been more than two dozen of those since March.

In this case, the Huffington Post Media Group, run by Arianna Huffington, has typically either created new topic sites or relaunched old AOL ones.

This week, for example, the company rejiggered AOL TV as HuffPost TV, as well as announcing El Huffington Post, an international Spanish-language version of the Huffington Post that will debut in early 2012, in partnership with El País.

The BermanBraun effort, though, is more independent and large-scale. It will feature extensive video and heavy use of imagery. Huffington Post will be involved in editorial selection, and has been working closely with the firm on incorporating social elements.

“It’s been a very dynamic and collaborative partnership — we’ve worked together on everything from design to picking the editors,” said Roy Sekoff, founding editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, about the arrangement. “BermanBraun brings a distinctive approach to their sites, and we’ve helped infuse that with our focus on real-time, social, and building community.”

Sekoff declined to give more details, such as the names of the sites. (They won’t be HuffPost Pets, HuffPost Weather and HuffPost Dudes, though!)

Pets could be a strong category if done in a new way, especially if designed with new tablet devices in mind. And weather, to my mind, is a sleeper category if reimagined freshly.

BermanBraun — which also develops television shows and movies — has a lot of experience in the online content arena. It has previously created Web sites for Microsoft’s MSN unit, including the high-profile celebrity site Wonderwall.

It will be interesting to see how the collaboration turns out. In the meantime, here’s my favorite weather song — Lena Horne rules! — to enjoy until the three sites launch:

Two of the more interesting online media properties are apparently joining up for a year-end online idea festival.

The AOL-owned Huffington Post, and TED, the massive conference organization and online site dedicated to its offerings, will jointly feature 18 of the best onstage speeches from TED’s excellent year-round global events.

The idea-thon will be called “Best of TED 2011: A Countdown of 18 Groundbreaking Ideas to Reshape the World in 2012.” A post on the Huffington Post site noted that it will feature the popular TEDTalks and combine them with “new blog posts written by the people who delivered them, examining how their ideas were impacted by being shared with a global audience.”

Out of a total of 300 possible choices, the number of speeches has been narrowed down to 18, because TEDTalks are limited to no more than 18 minutes. The talks range over a wide array of topic areas, including science, art, music, tech and more.

In an interview today, HuffPost majordomo Arianna Huffington said that the aim was to spur thinking around big problems the world faces.

“We are trying to be people to rethink everything in a super engaging way,” she said. “That is what TED is famous for and we wanted to shed a lot of light on it.”

Here’s today’s, with game developer Kevin Slavin on “How Algorithms Shape Our World”:

This did not make it onto “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, but it is still very funny — a mock interview by Charlie Rose of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, Reed Hastings of Netflix and the world’s oldest “mean girl,” Rupert Murdoch of News Corp., all talking about Apple’s Steve Jobs.

Heh:

The Huffington Post Media Group, which says it has topped one billion page views for the month of August, has bought an online grassroots platform called Localocracy.

The price for the site, whose key execs will join the AOL content unit, is under $1 million, said sources close to the situation.

The HuffPost also announced it was hiring Lisa Belkin from the New York Times to be a senior columnist covering parenting and family issues.

The latest hiring and purchase are part of a number of moves at the news and blog site, which has been frantically expanding its offerings since it was acquired by AOL.

That now includes four more sections launching this week — Huff/Post50; HuffPost Gay Voices; HuffPost Weddings; and HuffPost High School — bringing the grand total of new sites to 21 since the Huffington Post officially merged with AOL in March.

“We want to launch sections for every interest and passion our readers have.” said HuffPost head Arianna Huffington in an interview yesterday. “Whatever your interest, we want to provide the latest content and stories and most advanced tools for engagement.”

And, presumably, get the most traffic from it all. Along with the record one billion page views, the site also said it had 37 million unique visitors in August, the largest number it has posted yet, with 5.1 million comments.

Here’s the official press release for the whole kitchen-sink shebang:

The Huffington Post Media Group Makes Key Announcements:

Acquires Localocracy, Pioneering Online Grassroots Platform, and Hires its
Leadership Team: Conor White-Sullivan, Aaron Soules and Jay Boice

Launches Four Huffington Post Sections This Week: Huff/Post50, with Rita Wilson as Editor-at-Large; HuffPost Gay Voices; HuffPost Weddings; and HuffPost High School; Group is latest of 21 new sites since The Huffington Post Merged with AOL in March

Hires Lisa Belkin from The New York Times as Senior Columnist
Covering Parenting, Work/Life Balance, and Family

Announces Record Huffington Post Size and Engagement, with Largest Number of UVs and Comments Ever, and Site Topping 1 Billion Page Views for First Time

New York, NY — October 3, 2011 – The Huffington Post Media Group (“HPMG”), a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information, today makes several key announcements: (1) HPMG is acquiring Localocracy, a groundbreaking online engagement platform enabling citizens to solve problems in their communities, and its founders, Conor White-Sullivan and Aaron Soules, and technology lead, Jay Boice, are joining the Huffington Post Media Group to work on the intersection of editorial and technology, and deepen the sites’ engagement with users; (2) The Huffington Post (“HuffPost”) is launching four sites this week; today, Huff/Post50, with Rita Wilson as editor-at-large; HuffPost Gay Voices; and HuffPost Weddings; tomorrow, HuffPost High School. They are the latest of 21 new verticals since The Huffington Post merged with AOL in March; (4) Lisa Belkin is joining HPMG as Senior Columnist from The New York Times, where she wrote the “Motherlode” blog. She’ll be covering parenting, work/life balance and family; and (5) HuffPost has recently achieved record size and engagement, with its largest number of UVs ever, 37MM*, and greatest number of monthly comments, 5.1MM. In an important milestone, the site also surpassed 1 billion page views for the first time.*

“I’m delighted to announce that Conor White-Sullivan, Aaron Soules and Jay Boice are joining our team,” said Arianna Huffington. “They’re pioneers in using the web to empower citizens to improve their towns, and their unique vision and talents will enable us to deepen our users’ engagement with our sites. We’re also excited to be launching HuffPost/50, HuffPost Gay Voices, HuffPost Weddings and HuffPost High School, the latest sections in our continued effort to provide content, community and a platform for expression for our readers’ every interest and passion. We’re also thrilled to welcome Lisa Belkin, who has built a large following with her writing on parenting and work/life balance issues, and who is a leader in online community building. She’ll be launching her ‘Parentlode’ blog on October 17th.”

Creating and Nurturing Online Communities to Make Lives Better

Localocracy was founded in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2009 as an online forum encouraging citizens to engage in local issues, share concerns and opinions, and rank problem-solving ideas. Its goal was to surface problems and employ the power of persuasion to spotlight solutions to issues big and small. At HPMG, founders White-Sullivan and Soules will build on their innovative approach to enhancing local democracy while leveraging HPMG’s powerful online community platform to engage its large and networked audience. Also joining the Group from Localocracy is Jay Boice, who will be instrumental in building new technologies to support enhanced online community interaction.

Said Conor and Soules: “What we’ve learned with Localocracy is that by harnessing user-generated content, we’re able to unleash a lot of people power. Our methodology is simple: we believe that everyone is an expert about something, so we want to give voice to that expertise and allow an exchange of ideas for all to see and participate in. We’re excited to be teaming up with The Huffington Post Media Group, a leader in social news and user engagement, and look forward to pushing the boundaries of what can be done when combining journalism and technology for the common good.”

Four New Sites; Four New Communities

The Huffington Post Media Group announces today the launch of four destination sites: Huff/Post50 (www.huffingtonpost.com/50), HuffPost Gay Voices (www.huffingtonpost.com/gay-voices) and HuffPost Weddings (www.huffingtonpost/weddings). Each offers HuffPost’s unique combination of real-time news and opinion, and passionate communities powered by a leading social news platform.

HuffPost/50 — whose Editor-at-Large is actress, producer and writer Rita Wilson — covers the challenges, complexities and joys facing the boomer generation, now 77 million people strong. It spotlights boomers who fearlessly tackle new challenges in the spirit of reinventing themselves, regardless of age, and encourages boomers to question conventional wisdom about aging. Topics being covered include: longevity, relationships and sex, politics, the intense “sandwich” pressure of simultaneously taking care of aging parents and children, retirement, spirituality and religion, friendship, politics and dying.

The site is meant to be thought-provoking yet also humorous and life-affirming, and while encouraging boomers to seize the present, Huff/Post50 welcomes reflection and the sharing of hard-earned wisdom. The site is a rare platform for people 50 and older who want to share what’s on their minds. Bloggers on the section include: Bill Maher, ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour, and musicians Ann and Nancy Wilson.

Said Rita Wilson: “The idea that we boomers are somehow supposed to wind things down as we get older completely escapes me. Exploring the minds and hearts of this group of people is exciting. It’s never too late to mix things up, change your life, to get to what you really should be doing — or want to be doing. As Mark Twain said, ‘Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.’”

HuffPost High School, launching tomorrow, is a place for teens to engage with one another about what’s really happening in their lives — socially, academically, and culturally. The site features some of the nation’s top high school journalists and is a dynamic platform for teen bloggers. It’s a go-to guide for everything teens care about, from college prep, the nuances of social networking, culture, and celebrity gossip to high school sports, comedy, politics, the prom and beyond.

HuffPost Gay Voices, also launching today, covers the complexities of the LGBT community, from family and faith to politics and sexuality. The section covers news, culture, and trends, and offers opinion that spotlights all matters of interest to the LGBT community. The site fearlessly looks at powerful yet silent influences on identity and relationships, such as class, race and religion. HuffPost Gay Voices features everything from travel, style and entertainment to politics, personalities and health. Launch week bloggers include Christine Quinn, Margaret Cho and Bruce Vilanch. The Human Rights Campaign is Gay Voices’ inaugural sponsor.

HuffPost Weddings, the third section launching today, has comprehensive coverage of weddings and marriage from all angles, from untraditional wedding cakes and exotic dream honeymoons, to the more practical, including tips on navigating the world of wedding planners, contemporary wedding etiquette, and more. The site will spark discussions about everything from managing the family politics of inter-faith ceremonies and the nuances of gay weddings to the latest proposal video gone viral. And while HuffPost Weddings is meant as a one-stop-shop of advice with a supportive community for those planning their weddings, it also appeals to a wider audience interested in the culture and mores of modern weddings planning, weddings, and marriage. Bloggers on the site include: Heidi Klum; Kelly Meyer; celebrity wedding planners Mindy Weiss, Sharon Sacks, Preston Bailey, and Colin Cowie; designers Nanette Lepore, Angel Sanchez, Reem Acra; and more.

Rapid HuffPost Expansion; Record Audience and Engagement

The Huffington Post’s rapid expansion has only intensified following its merger with AOL in March. The site recorded its largest number of unique visitors per month last month — 37 million* — and also surpassed 1 billion page views for the first time. In addition, HuffPost’s engaged community continues to grow, posting a record 5.1 million comments in August.

With the four sites launching this week, HuffPost will have debuted 21 sections since the merger, all listed here:

• Huff/Post50
• HuffPost BlackVoices
• HuffPost Canada
• HuffPost Canada Living
• HuffPost Celebrity
• HuffPost Culture
• HuffPost Gay Voices
• HuffPost High School
• HuffPost LatinoVoices
• HuffPost Locals: San Francisco, D.C
• HuffPost Parents
• HuffPost San Francisco
• HuffPost Small Business
• HuffPost Travel
• HuffPost UK
• HuffPost UK Tech
• HuffPost UK Universities & Education
• HuffPost Women
• StyleList
• StyleList Home

(*comScore, Aug. 2011)

But it belies a deeper problem the company is grappling with: a culture of clashing fiefs and personalities created by a rapid series of acquisitions that haven’t jelled, according to a dozen current and former employees.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

I cannot express my delight at finally getting to appear in a CGI news video by Next Media Animation, in a segment about the CrunchFund controversy.

In it, the New York Times’ David Carr and I attack TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington with paintball guns. He is wearing a green wizard outfit.

Later, a flaming Arianna Huffington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong make an appearance.

Yes, it is that kind of video.

Enjoy:

Dierks founded and developed Google Checkout, among other things, at the search giant. He has been there since 2004, based in New York.

The fast-growing media and news site has added a lot of content to its offerings since selling to AOL, including merging a variety of sections and overhauling others.

Here’s the official press release from HPMG, which is announcing the move today:

The AOL Huffington Post Media Group Names Google’s Tim Dierks Senior Vice President of Engineering

Noted Software Engineer Who Oversaw Multiple Teams and Founded and Developed “Google Checkout” to Oversee Group’s Expanding Engineering Team

New York, NY — September 7, 2011 – The AOL Huffington Post Media Group, a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information, announces today that Tim Dierks, Software Engineering Manager at Google, has been named Senior Vice President of Engineering. In this position, he will be responsible for overseeing the group’s expanding programming team. Dierks is an acclaimed software engineer who oversaw multiple engineering teams at Google and founded and developed the company’s innovative Google Checkout offering. The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group; Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group; and Alexander Gounares, Chief Technology Officer of AOL.

“I’m delighted to welcome Tim to our team,” said Arianna Huffington. “In addition to having a track record of successfully leading large programming teams focused on work that’s complex, fast moving and diverse, he’s also a creative force adept at seeing his vision through to completion. Tim shares our passion for constantly improving the user experience, and I look forward to adding his ideas, insight, and knowledge to the AOL HPMG mix.”

Said Paul Berry: “We’re continuing to build a premier editorial, engineering and product group, and Tim Dierks — a rare combination of effective leader and innovative thinker –- is an incredible addition to oversee our talented and hard working team of programmers.”

Tim Dierks joined Google NYC in 2004. At the company, he has worked on internal security systems, used his “20%” time to found Google Checkout, an online payment processing service, and led engineering teams working on many different initiatives, including AdSense for Feeds, Television and Print, and FeedBurner.

In his position leading a team building internal-facing applications for the company, he managed his group’s existing software programs, oversaw the building of innovative new products, and introduced a broader set of engineering tools, including broader outsourcing and software purchasing. He also built and led a research and development team in New York that focused on TV advertising audiences, which led to the development of a “bid on and buy your audience” sales offering. Prior roles at the company included leading the newspaper ads and publisher content engineering teams.

Said Dierks: “The AOL Huffington Post Media Group offers a wide range of great content and compelling social engagement. I look forward to working with Paul Berry and the AOL Huffington Post Media Group team to continue building technology to enable and drive this terrific platform.”

Said Alexander Gounares: “Technology innovation is fundamental to AOL’s products and services, so it’s fabulous to have a noted technologist like Tim joining the team. Across the breadth of AOL technologies, we are building a world class organization of top notch talent using the latest state of the art tools. Tim brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and leadership with him, and I am looking forward to working with him.”

Here’s another interesting wrinkle to the ongoing saga of AOL, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and his nascent venture firm, CrunchFund.

Since the controversy erupted last week, Arrington has reached out to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, as well as others in Silicon Valley, about buying back his popular tech news site.

Sources said Arrington needs funding to do so — irony alert! — and told them over the weekend that he planned to use his blogging bully pulpit to force AOL into giving up the site it bought for more than $25 million almost exactly a year ago.

But sources said — at this point — AOL is not inclined to sell the site, which has prompted Arrington to pen a blog post on TechCrunch, not-meant-as-a-joke-titled “Editorial Independence,” suggesting they do so.

Quelle surprise!

We’ve proposed two options to Aol.

1. Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition. Given the current circumstances, that means autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination. To put it simply, TechCrunch would stay with Aol but would be independent of the Huffington Post.

or

2. Sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.

Arrington used an image of the Spartans from, I think, the movie “300,” on the post. Memo to Mike: All the Spartans died in the end, however valiant. It goes without saying — this situation is not valiant and you are definitely not King Leonidas.

“It is at a stalemate, so this is the result,” said one person with knowledge of the pugnacious effort by Arrington to take back his baby.

Which, of course, he sold in the first place.

AOL has stated it will not allow Arrington to remain its editor or have “influence on coverage” while also doing a venture fund.

Thus, some of Arrington’s staffers, such as M.G. Siegler, have already been plowing the ground ahead of Arrington’s post.

Siegler, for example, penned a weepy diatribe about how unfair it all is and how different the site operates from slow-footed meanies at big media organizations such as the New York Times. The Times strafed Arrington in a David Carr column yesterday.

Wrote Siegler, in what can only be described as soap-opera fantastic: “TechCrunch is on the precipice. As soon as tomorrow, Mike may be thrown out of the company he founded. Or he may not. No one knows.”

Tune in tomorrow to see if AOL’s content chief and Arrington boss Arianna Huffington will use that gun in her pocket. Or will she use the razor-chiseled cheekbones of Armstrong to slice her new nemesis?

(Alls I can say to add to what I have already said, at this point: Good lord. But, wait, isn’t there a TechCrunch Disrupt conference next week to hawk and make it all about Arrington and not the entrepreneurs? This explains everything!)

While Siegler is trying to make it all sound as if it is so very unfair, since the site is presumably so very special, AllThingsD operates in a similar quick-edit way to TechCrunch — where I will underscore there are some terrific journalists.

But — because it is simply flat-out wrong on every possible scale — neither Walt Mossberg nor I would ever consider being editors of the site while also running a venture fund.

(In fact, it is now a standing rule at ATD that, if we ever did such an unthinkable thing — which of course we never would — our writers tell us we stink rather than praise us.)

Meanwhile, we’ll be busy breaking some actual tech news on this site, like here and here and here, while TechCrunch presumably faux-burns and AOL fiddles.

So here’s the latest (for those just tuning in, we’ll do backstory later — who said the inverted triangle was dead?):

TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington is no longer working for AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group, but he remains employed by AOL. He’ll be running his new CrunchFund as part of the company’s AOL Ventures arm, says Maureen Sullivan, who runs AOL corporate communications.

That’s consistent with what the company said yesterday, but contradicts what AOL HuffingtonPost spokesman Mario Ruiz told the Business Insider this morning. But since Sullivan reports directly to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, we’ll take her word on this.

Sullivan also says that Arrington is no longer officially working for TechCrunch, the powerful tech Web site he built, then sold to AOL last year. That also syncs up with the official line from yesterday. AOL will hire a new managing editor, but Arrington will keep his “founding editor” title, and will continue to write for the site, but will need to disclose conflicts of interest when he does so, etc.

Again, no change. So really, the only question is: What kind of influence and input will Arrington have on TechCrunch when he’s not writing? Here this gets sticky, and it doesn’t look like it will ever be unsticky.

Sullivan says that Arrington’s relationship with TechCrunch is “still to be determined, and it’s important to make sure that Arianna [Huffington] is super comfortable with that relationship … I think that everyone is going to be very careful that there isn’t influence on coverage.”

Just to be clear about it, Sullivan called me back a while later to reiterate the same points. “Michael is now a professional investor working for AOL. He will have no editorial control.”

Hear that, CrunchFund investors? The guy you are handing $20 million to won’t be able to influence the way TechCrunch interacts with your companies, your investments and your potential investments. Is that what you signed on for?

Now, one last compare and contrast exercise. Here’s Greylock Partners Reid Hoffman’s rationale for investing in the CrunchFund, via Kara Swisher’s story this morning:

“Techcrunch will get some real deal flow from entrepreneurs that we would otherwise not see, because they have established a prominent position as the SV/Tech industry information feed. As many tech entrepreneurs read it — both within Silicon Valley and globally — and view the information news feed to be their target for announcing themselves to the world, Crunchfund will have access to deal flow to these diverse and early stage companies. Some of these companies will be the kind of early stage companies with billion-dollar potential that Greylock invests in.”

It’d be great to hear from the principals on this, so I’ve dutifully pinged Arrington, Huffington and Armstrong. But my hunch is that some of them, at least, will be mum for a bit. More later! I bet!

Of course I have something to say about the news yesterday that AOL would be a key investor in a new early-stage venture fund being started by TechCrunch’s perpetually petulant editor Michael Arrington — with a big, fat and decidedly greasy assist from a panoply of Silicon Valley’s most powerful VC firms and angel investors.

Arrington has previously called me “chief whiner” — oooh, buuuurn, although fair enough, since I have compared him to an egomaniac turtle named Yertle in the past — about my nagging him over the importance of upholding standards of fairness and ethics in journalism.

So as not to let him down, let me begin the whining.

First, my initial reaction when I first heard about the deal: Ugh. Sigh. Hopelessly corrupt. Now 100 percent more icky! A giant, greedy, Silicon Valley pig pile.

I was upset.

By early evening, after my kids told me to chillax, my dark mood had changed to accept that the transaction — however profoundly distasteful to me — was part and parcel of the insidious log-rolling, back-scratching ecosystem that has happened in every other center of power in the universe since the beginning of time.

And so it goes in Silicon Valley.

In fact, the creation of a $20 million investment kitty that Arrington has dubbed CrunchFund is simply the formalization of a long-standing arrangement that has already been going on since he founded his popular tech blog.

That is to say, in which the basic standards of journalism are first warped by calling it newfangled truth-telling and then endlessly corroded by using a wily and unusually aggressive combination of favors and threats to extract, from start-ups and VCs in need of press, both exclusive access and information.

And now, inevitably, money.

This could have been a lot cleaner, of course, by Arrington simply resigning from TechCrunch, becoming a VC and perhaps starting a new blog where his agenda is much clearer, from which he could huff and puff away as he does with much entertaining gusto at real and (mostly) imagined slights.

There is certainly precedent for VCs blogging, including Fred Wilson, Brad Feld and Ben Horowitz. And, despite my criticisms about ethics, it is clear that Arrington is a talented writer whose unique voice would be even stronger if it was truly seen as separate from what has become a news organization.

But because of his obvious need to be the center of attention — requiring the ermine kingmaker mantle and foisting his patented I’m-here-to-tell-it-like-it-is attitude on us all — that appears to be impossible.

(By the way, I await Arrington’s usual inane rant about the fictional conflicts of interest related to my gay Google marriage anytime now in 3 … 2 … 1, always and purposefully leaving out the pertinent facts that I can only wed one person, get no financial benefit and am also a prominent critic of the scary search behemoth, while he can make a badillion questionable and grossly tangled investments.)

Personal annoyances aside, what’s most interesting here is the group of Silicon Valley power players who lined up to bow and scrape and then hand over a small pile of dough to the blogger who would be king.

They include: Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Greylock Partners, Austin Ventures and Accel Partners, as well as individual investments from partners at Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, entrepreneur Kevin Rose and DST Global’s Yuri Milner. And, of course, the inevitable Arrington BFF Ron Conway.

Holy googa mooga, that would be, well, everyone, except Ashton Kutcher and Justin Timberlake (who will surely appear soon enough).

As one person also pointed out to me, I don’t recall this many competing VCs investing in one company, let alone another venture fund.

It goes without saying that the reasons they all decided to jump in this fetid pool with abandon are quite varied, if all entirely compromised.

One investor told me — off the record, naturally — that he thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what happened and so he wanted in, especially since everyone else was doing it.

Another well-known VC said that there is no downside to being financially affiliated, especially in attracting talent to its start-ups, with Arrington and, by extension, TechCrunch.

The well-respected Reid Hoffman of Greylock was the only one brave enough to talk on the record, explaining the reasoning pretty clearly:

“Techcrunch will get some real deal flow from entrepreneurs that we would otherwise not see, because they have established a prominent position as the SV/Tech industry information feed. As many tech entrepreneurs read it — both within Silicon Valley and globally — and view the information news feed to be their target for announcing themselves to the world, Crunchfund will have access to deal flow to these diverse and early stage companies. Some of these companies will be the kind of early stage companies with billion-dollar potential that Greylock invests in.”

There you have it: No one can afford to be out of the deal flow in these times, even if it means cutting corners.

While TechCrunch’s owner, AOL, said Arrington will no longer be managing editor, with only writing duties at the site he dominates and with no editorial control, Hoffman’s use of TechCrunch for CrunchFund was accurate, because in the eyes of many they are interchangeable.

That’s due to the fact that Arrington still breaks or is clearly the source for important stories on the site and, more importantly, is the big swinging dude who attracts all the eager entrepreneurs to the party. He is the fulcrum of that site, even as it has grown.

And so it will remain, I am guessing, no matter how much AOL insists it will not be so, because the easy questions pile up quickly:

Will Arrington keep doing what are clearly news stories, for example, even though he protesteth too much — as he did in the New York Times yesterday — that he is not a journalist?

And, if so, is it right for him to do so given his insider status, creating a nonparity of sourcing and crystal clear conflicts of interest?

Most of all, can he resist his palpable love of news-breaking and scoops, even if he gets them in ever more unseemly ways?

As if to make it all pretty, Arrington told reporters yesterday that he has put a clause in his limited partnership agreement so he can report on anything he likes, and in any way, about his investors and their companies, however confidential, except those he invests in.

O joyous day! Freedom of the press is preserved and our sacred First Amendment can breathe a sigh of relief, now that it is enshrined in an unholy blogger-VC LP agreement.

After pausing for a moment so that Thomas Jefferson and Edward R. Murrow can stop spinning in their graves, you can go down this road for many increasingly bumpy miles, which only becomes more twisted and confusing as it continues.

I finally talked to one investor in CrunchFund, who said simply and honestly: “It’s not that much money, so who cares?”

Indeed, who does care anymore about crossing what had long been very bright lines in journalism and, if you want to get all cosmic, in life?

Obviously, most of all, not AOL, or its CEO Tim Armstrong, or its head of content, Arianna Huffington. The pair, for whatever reason, decided to make a startling exception for Arrington from a rule that explicitly bars reporters at its media units from investing in the companies they cover.

That happened after he recently did a complete 180 from a previous decision to stop investing and jumped right back in, leaving Armstrong and Huffington to clean up the ethical mess.

They only made it worse, with their decision to throw journalism under the bus by letting Arrington do as he pleased, while touting how important it was for other content sites at AOL to remain more pure.

In the spirit of full disclosure, these kinds of ethical lapses are endemic these days in journalism. Case in point: The appalling phone-hacking controversy taking place at News Corp.’s News International unit in Britain.

While I cannot speak for Dow Jones, I can say that the behavior in another News Corp. property certainly takes its toll on those who adhere to higher standards at the company, especially when it comes to morale.

Thus, I can imagine how others feel at AOL — including those you-know-who-you-are silent ones at TechCrunch — who can’t and, more to the point, wouldn’t make the deals Arrington has been allowed to get away with.

It is not a good feeling, I can assure you.

And, while I have not spoken to her about it, I’d imagine that Huffington cannot be thrilled to be pushing for better journalism at AOL and trying to burnish her cred by hiring some top reporters, while also having to deal with this.

That’s okay, because Armstrong was perfectly willing to do the awkward pretzel-twist needed to explain away the controversial situation, also in an interview with the Times:

“TechCrunch is a different property and they have different standards. We have a traditional understanding of journalism with the exception of TechCrunch, which is different but is transparent about it.”

In this case, Tim, I am sorry to inform you that transparency is a complete canard and is more likely to end up covering up a lot more transgressions than it ever will reveal.

And, essentially and lazily sloughing it off by saying, “That’s just Mike being Mike,” is not going to cut it, at least not with me.

Not that any amount of tsk-tsking about it matters, I suppose, as Arrington finally gets his fervent Pinocchio-on-a-star wish to be a real-boy VC, can add yet another tainted buck to the pile of billions his venture pals already have, and just call it another typical day in Silicon Valley.

Still, when you are the designated whiner-in-chief, it is pretty much all one can do.

The Huffington Post Media Group, AOL’s fast-moving content unit, is launching a celebrity site called HuffPost Celebrity today, as well as another called HuffPost Culture.

HuffPost Celebrity, which ate AOL’s former celeb-focused site PopEater, is described as “an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters.”

While the Huffington Post has always had a huge dollop of celebrity news and blogs, it puts the much more focused site into a very crowded arena online, with competitors such as Yahoo’s omg!, Time Warner’s People magazine Web site, as well as AOL-owned TMZ.com.

That means a major focus on the news site’s mix of short and juicy items, blogs of the famous (and infamous) and lots and lot of videos and photos.

And, indeed, the new site, which can be viewed here, has that. The main feature now is a big photo with the title, “PHOTOS: Gaga Arrives Down Under” and blogs by Jon Favreau and Tracey Ullman and slide shows of “Kardashian Bikini Show & Tell” and “Child Stars That Avoided ‘The Curse.’”

The move is another of a series of them in an aggressive expansion of AOL’s content offerings under its chief, Arianna Huffington (pictured right), who now has the money and staff she has obviously long wanted to blow her online media empire out.

And it is clearly yet another sign of the reliance AOL now has on the media group’s platform, since it bought the Huffington Post for $315 million in January.

She recently launched a U.K. edition of the site, for example, and has pushed out a number of new categories as the HuffPost has subsumed all of AOL’s previous content efforts.

Here’s the official press release on the latest launches:

AOL HUFFINGTON POST MEDIA GROUP ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF TWO SITES: HUFFPOST CELEBRITY AND HUFFPOST CULTURE

Entertainment News Site Goes Live Today, Arts Destination on Wednesday;

Both With HuffPost’s Real-Time News and Opinion, and Leading Edge User Engagement

“HuffPost Celebrity Network” Syndication Feed Launches Today

New York, NY (July 11, 2011) — The AOL Huffington Post Media Group, a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information, announces today the launch of two destination sites: HuffPost Celebrity (huffingtonpost.com/celebrity), a lively mix of real-time entertainment news, opinion and gossip, and HuffPost Culture (huffingtonpost.com/culture), covering a wide span of the arts, from theatre and film to music and dance. HuffPost Celebrity goes live today and HuffPost Culture launches Wednesday.

Both sites offer The Huffington Post’s unique combination of real-time news and opinion, and a passionate and engaged community powered by the latest social engagement tools. HuffPost Celebrity also features a syndication platform offering the latest entertainment news and blog posts to partner sites. HuffPost Celebrity is edited by Katy Hall, Managing Editor of Entertainment of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; HuffPost Culture is edited by Gazelle Emami, Culture Editor of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; and both sites are being overseen by John Montorio, Editorial Director, Entertainment, Culture & Lifestyle of AOL Huffington Post Media Group. Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group, made the announcement.

“We’ve always offered a take on celebrity and culture that is a fun, high/low mix that reflects our users’ diverse range of interests and desire for comprehensive entertainment news delivered in real-time. Creating these two new destination sites will allow us to both expand and deepen our coverage,” said Arianna Huffington. “Our goal is to give our readers everything from buzzy items to thought-provoking opinion pieces delivered with a style and a voice that’s uniquely HuffPost. We want to inform and entertain, while engaging our community around these subjects and serving as a starting point for compelling ‘digital watercooler’ conversations.”

HuffPost Celebrity is an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters. The site is accessible, fresh, and filled with the kinds of stories our readers love to share. HuffPost Celebrity encourages users to engage with stories and features the most up-to-the-minute photos, videos, slide shows, and blog posts from industry executives to celebrities, all weighing in in real-time. Among the talent that has blogged on The Huffington Post are Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney, Madonna, Ryan Reynolds, Larry David, Bill Maher, Rob Lowe, Russell Simmons, Natalie Portman and more.

HuffPost Culture will complement our entertainment coverage, delivering a one-stop-shop for all that’s happening in the performing arts, visual and broadcast arts, including dance, opera, music, architecture, film, TV, photography and more. The site will have visually arresting images of performances and art pieces with HuffPost’s singular style of coverage, including original reporting, artist profiles, reviews, interactive infographics, sneak peeks, slide shows, videos and more. HuffPost Culture will be a forum for discussion of arts and culture, and serves as a guide for users wanting to stay abreast of cultural news and events.

The site will offer a number of ongoing features meant to explore the arts from all angles. For example, as part of a “Strange Bedfellows” series — following unexpected collaborations between artists — HuffPost Culture will offer an exclusive video collaboration between David Lynch and the band Interpol; “On Our Radar” will highlight emerging talent; and profiles of artists include an “Architects in America” series. HuffPost Culture will feature exclusive playlists from musicians and DJs, starting off with a summer playlist from Chromeo. The weekly “Culture Forecast” will serve as a handy guide to what’s happening in arts and culture. At launch, HuffPost Culture will offer different best-of-the-year-so-far picks, from music to art exhibitions. In addition, HuffPost Culture will present curated content from AOL sites such as Moviefone and HuffPost Celebrity, as well as the best arts coverage from around the web.

The launch of the HuffPost Celebrity Network today offers media partners syndicated, constantly updating entertainment content available for use across a wide variety of platforms. Participating partners include SFGate, Tribune’s Zap2It, and Russell Simmons’ Global Grind. “HuffPost Celebrity demonstrates our ability to combine compelling content with a platform centered around user engagement, while our new feed, the HuffPost Celebrity Network, shows how we can most effectively leverage our unique assets,” said Kerry Trainor, Senior Vice President/General Manager, AOL Entertainment. “We make it turnkey for our partners to offer their users the highest quality entertainment news, whether it’s for the latest tablet or a long-standing website. We want to offer a vibrant distribution feed that reaches a wide audience for our content, while enabling our partners to engage their users around it as well –- it’s a classic win-win.”

The British version of the Huffington Post, which has been expected, went live today.

It is the site’s first major international expansion beyond North America (Canada was first).

While the content is aimed at the audience there, it will still have the usual HuffPo mix of saucy news, videos and blogs.

But in this case, instead of U.S. celebs and pols, those blogs will come from famous British luminaries, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair; Sarah Brown, wife of another former PM, Gordon Brown; and entertainers Ricky Gervais and Tracey Ullman.

The Huffington Post apparently already attracts a monthly audience in excess of 1.2 million in the U.K.

AOL — which bought the high-profile news and opinion site for $315 million — has given its content head, Arianna Huffington, a lot of backing and also funding for expansion, including globally.

Other international Huffington Post sites are likely to roll out soon.

Here’s the official press release:

BRITAIN WAKES UP TO THE HUFFINGTON POST UK TODAY

Latest Edition of “HuffPost” Blends Brand’s Unique Mix of News, Opinion, Community, and Engagement with Original, UK-centric Content

6th July, 2011, London – The Huffington Post UK (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/), a UK version of The Huffington Post (“HuffPost”), the popular American news and opinion site, goes live today. The site features HuffPost’s unique combination of original reporting, aggregation, a leading-edge commenting forum, pioneering social engagement tools, and a vibrant platform for a wide range of bloggers. High profile bloggers already lined up to contribute through the site include Tony Blair, Jeremy Hunt and Sarah Brown as well as comedy and entertainment luminaries such as Ricky Gervais, Tracey Ullman, Imogen Edwards-Jones, Jonathan Meades and Kate Garraway .

The Huffington Post UK is edited by Carla Buzasi (nee Bevan), Editor-in-Chief, AOL Europe who leads an initial team of ten dedicated editors and writers, with further support from the wider AOL editorial team in the UK, as well as The Huffington Post team in the United States. The Huffington Post UK platform gives hundreds of British bloggers the opportunity to showcase their work to millions of readers globally.

Other recent new hires include Political Editor Chris Wimpress, a former political correspondent for BBC Radio 4; News Editor Jacqui Head, formerly an Online Journalist at Al-Jazeera, with stints at BBC and CNN; and Caroline Frost, Entertainment Editor, previously an Arts Producer for BBC News, and Online Entertainment Editor at the Herald Sun in Melbourne. Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Chief Executive Officer of E.L. Rothschild and board member of Estee Lauder and The Economist Group, is the site’s Editor-at-Large.

The Huffington Post (US) was founded in May 2005, and has become an influential and oft-quoted media brand, “The Internet Newspaper.” It attracts 36 million* readers and only last month overtook the New York Times to become the world’s biggest newspaper online.

The UK site offers coverage of politics, entertainment, living, style, world news, technology, comedy, and is a top destination for news, blogs and original content. In the coming months, The Huffington Post UK will evolve to feature even more content across a whole range of genres.

Commenting on the launch of the UK site, Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group, said: “We are arriving here in the midst of a rich and thriving media culture marked by great innovation. We look forward to adding HuffPost UK to the mix, and to our real-time ‘digital water cooler’ — which embraces the best of the new (immediacy, transparency, interactivity) and the best of the old (fact-checking, accuracy, fairness, and an emphasis on storytelling) — becoming the spark for many interesting conversations.”

Kate Burns, SVP, AOL Europe, said: “The Huffington Post has pioneered a new way for people to connect with the news of the day, and with each other, so we’re excited to bring this unique platform to the UK. We’re giving people the chance to write, share and debate opinions, creating a democratic site that can give Joe Bloggs the same platform as Ricky Gervais.”

The Huffington Post (US) already attracts a monthly audience in excess of 1.2 million [comScore, May 2011] UK based readers who are engaged, influential, and affluent. The UK site will feature premium ad formats, including the recently launched “Project Devil,” which has generated unprecedented engagement levels, time spent on ads and time spent viewing ad videos. At launch The Huffington Post UK will showcase an LG Project Devil campaign brokered through leading media agency Mindshare and a Dell PLE campaign negotiated by Mediacom.

Here’s an internal memo, titled “Platform for Growth,” just sent out by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, in which he buries the lede by noting the business partner of content czar Arianna Huffington, Jon Brod, will move to work on its local Patch effort and MapQuest mapping unit full time.

General managers previously reporting to Brod will now report directly to Armstrong. Brod came to AOL from its acquisition of Patch, which Brod ran.

Second, AOL also elevated an exec as Chief Analytics Officer and head of something called Project Management Organization.

And, the company has further simplified its branding structure by moving some of its brands under the Huffington Post Media label, which it had already talked about doing. It’s essentially a streamlining of a previous streamlining.

Here is the email:

From: Tim Armstrong
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:29:19 -0400
To: Tim Armstrong
Subject: Platform for Growth

AOLers –

We spent the last week in France at the Cannes Lions Festival, which is a global meeting of the advertising community (the technology industry has CES and Cannes is becoming the “CES” of global advertising). After finishing Investor Day and the global company meeting two weeks ago, the trip to Cannes further underlined the opportunity we are starting to take advantage of — that content and brands are the next wave of the Internet.

Content, Brand Advertising, Video, and Local are going to be at the center of the web and mobile for the next decade and we have made bold moves to position AOL at the forefront of those areas. We have a powerful portfolio of assets as a company and by matching our people, brands, and marketplace-defining products, we will simply get stronger, better and faster.

We are going to further strengthen our content brand portfolio to put maximum leverage into key areas of growth. We are also investing in the leadership structure of the brands and the overall analytical framework we have as a company.

The brand portfolio simplification and investments we are announcing today come from our core strategy, the metrics of growth we see in the business today, and the expanding opportunities we see in the marketplace. Every brand metric was thoroughly reviewed and thoughtfully discussed to get to the list we are sharing with you today. There are a set of brands we will continue to run as stand-alone brands because they have built strong organic traffic, significant customer bases, and unique market positions. There is another set of brands that will gain usage, a larger customer base, and deeper content by becoming part of the Huffington Post platform.

We want to make this transition as simple and intuitive as possible for employees, consumers, and advertisers, so we’ve set up a link to the brand site to review the complete list of brands and USPs.

The AOL Huffington Post Media Group technology platform is the end result of a company wide effort combining the very best content, video, ad, and data technologies from the Blogsmith platform with the best technologies from Huffington Post platform — and we’ve been hard at work adding many new capabilities as well. This combined platform simply has no equal in the digital content space and features an innovative approach to coverage, with edit and tech teams working closely together, and a “hyper-efficient editor” model that enables editors and reporters to rapidly deploy all the tools available to create and disseminate stories. We have integrated in 5min video, AOL demand analytics, and AOL’s data platform deeply into the system, and we will soon be running all of the advertising through AOL’s ad platform. Editors are not silo-ed but empowered to quickly bring their stories to life — and to millions of readers. This leads to engagement on a massive scale, creating an editorial ecosystem with high-quality content, leading edge blogging, commenting, and social sharing capabilities that are easily scale-able and enable real-time speed and a more holistic approach to covering news and engaging audiences.

Here are some quick statistics on the benefits we are seeing in combining sets of brands and platforms:

· When we migrated AOL News to the HuffPost platform we saw significant increases in organic traffic with search entries per UV increasing 195% and social entries per UV up 142%.
· By combining Politics Daily with HuffPost Politics content, social interactions, which include HuffPost comments, FB comments, shares and re-shares, FB Likes, tweets, re-tweets, and email shares reached 3.3MM.

· Adopting Huffington Post style blogging in the Patch platform allowed us to sign up 5,000 bloggers in 2 weeks.

The goals of the brand and platform investments are the following:

1. Grow traffic and grow revenue with high quality experiences for consumers and advertisers
2. Be the leader in content CMS and CMS for Ads (Devil + Social)
3. Simplify the business process and increase profitability in each vertical area
4. Scale video and International
5. Create a culture of speed and transparency on all fronts

In support of the brand investments, we are also making people investments. The current GM structure around the content brands will report to me and I have met with all the GM’s to discuss each vertical opportunity. Local will be broken out as a vertical and is a space where AOL is in a leadership position. Jon Brod will focus full-time on AOL’s local efforts, including Patch and Mapquest. Jon is the co-founder of Patch and has spent the past few months successfully integrating the Huffington Post and AOL media. AOL local has a lot of exciting products coming out this summer and we will be connecting many of those products to our larger business.

We are also announcing a new position that will have a positive impact across AOL — the formation of a Chief Analytics Officer and Project Management Organization (PMO). Tim Lemmon, currently working in Ned Brody’s Advertising.com Group, is being promoted to CAO, reporting directly to me, and will oversee and drive analytics and project management on a company-wide basis. Data and analytics are key to our success and we will continue to look for Tim to provide fact-based guidance and executional focus for all of AOL. Tim’s current AOL Analytics team including Pricing and Yield Management will continue to report to him.

I’ll be holding a working meeting today at 11am EDT with the Sales team to discuss the new brand structure, the HuffPost platform, and the supporting org structure. The meeting information is available on AOL Today and anyone is invited to dial in if you are interested in learning more. Go AOL! -TA

Talking to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong earlier this week about its investors day tomorrow, he used the word “execution” a lot.

No, not the kind evoking a firing squad if he did not succeed at turning around the New York-based Internet giant soon as he has long promised.

Instead, Armstrong was referring to reassuring big shareholders and Wall Street analysts that AOL was now in a mode of making sure all its many moves to turn around the company will finally begin to pay off.

“Basically, our point is going to be about fully operating around the strategy we’ve built,” said Armstrong in a wide-ranging interview. “It seems right for investors to ask about executing on what we have been doing for the last year and a half.”

It’s certainly the right message for the charismatic executive to be delivering, as he and other top AOL execs present their plans moving forward, especially after what has turned out to be a very hyperactive year.

After deep layoffs, a massive rejiggering of its management ranks and a number of shifts of its business focus, without much advertising increase to show for it yet, Armstrong has also pushed through a series of acquisitions.

It culminated in the high-profile and decidedly dramatic purchase of the Huffington Post in January for $350 million in cash.

Now, said Armstrong, deals will be taking a back seat to products.

“We are diligently staying on strategy and really focusing on products and services,” said Armstrong. “We have laid out the path we are on and now investors want proof of the concept.”

To Armstrong, that means the push of “branded content” and a continued focus on significant properties in key topic areas.

Tomorrow, in news that could worry investors, AOL will be noting that traffic is flat year over year, but explaining that it is due to the outsourcing of its sports and health sites.

“If you added that back in, we would have had a phenomenal year of growth,” said Armstrong. “Our main point will be that this is the right path for AOL.”

In fact, in an unusual wording, he said AOL was betting on the “urbanization” of the Web around big branded sites, which is, in many ways, exactly where the Web was a decade ago with Yahoo, Excite and others.

But Armstrong will be making the point that this retro idea is perfect for today, as marketers look for quality content that attracts big audiences, which has seen its most energetic application in the Huffington Post.

Thus, his linchpin remains the flashy news site’s even flashier co-founder Arianna Huffington, who has cut a very wide swath through AOL’s content efforts since Amstrong made her media czar of the company.

As Armstrong did, she also stressed the focus on unique visitors and ad growth, more video and a laser focus on local.

This includes shoving editorial into every AOL property, including unlikely ones such as Moviefone and MapQuest, and integrating it all to point back to the Huffington Post mothership.

“Much better editorial integration is a centerpiece of what we are doing, surfacing content in new places it was not before,” said Huffington, who used examples of local stories via its Patch unit that have gone global with a special push.

And by global, that also means the creation of new content sites in Europe and elsewhere, in order to build this unusual dream of a fully aggregating world.

“It is a big test of the HuffPo platform aggregation to do this,” said Huffington, who has clearly longed for the kind of money and staff to do this for a very long time. “It has moved a lot faster than I thought it would … but it feels good to be moving on so many fronts at once.”

Many fronts indeed, which might make investors pause. So far, those shareholders have had a continued wait-and-see attitude toward AOL, which has seen its stock decline almost 13 percent from its late 2009 IPO debut.

That’s mostly due to worries about whether the continued and expected fall-off of its lucrative access business can be met by similar increases in its ad business.

That share drop has been especially steep since the beginning of the year, but it has also not been drastic, indicating an interest in continuing to believe Armstrong’s confident — well, confidently delivered, at least — narrative.

As Citi’s Mark Mahaney wrote in a one-hand-other-hand note yesterday about the investor day:

Positives: 1) AOL still remains a top 5 U.S. Internet property; 2) In the latest quarter, AOL’s Display segment grew Y/Y for the first time in ~3 years, and this improvement seems sustainable; 3) At 4x ’11 EV/EBITDA, AOL’s valuation is among the lowest of any ’Net Stock. Negatives: 1) Deteriorating fundamentals; 2) Significant market share losses — ’Net usage, Display Advertising revenue & Search queries; 3) A significant profit hole from the structural decline of its Subs biz; 4) Substantial competitive risk; and 5) An unproven (@ AOL) management team.

“We all like Tim and what he says makes a lot of sense,” added one big investor, who is also attending and has many questions about the efficacy of what AOL is doing, in a common sentiment among its large shareholders. “But we also need to see real results soon.”

Hogan will take the spot last occupied by Patricia Chui, who was fired by AOL in April.

Hogan, who starts his new job June 26, will wear multiple hats: His official title is “Executive Features Editor”, and his duties also include running AOL TV. But his initial focus will be on Moviefone, which he wants to overhaul.

“We really want to take it from something that is successful as a ticket selling site, and try to make it into a robust gathering place for people who follow the movie industry and people who love movies,” he said. Hogan said he’ll hire fulltime editors and writers to beef up content on the site.

AOL fired Hogan’s predecessor after she distributed a memo informing Moviefone freelancers that their contracts were ending, but that they could contribute to the site as unpaid volunteers. Chui’s defenders said she had been treated unfairly by AOL, which was in the process of overhauling all of its editorial teams after acquiring the Huffington Post.

Hogan says he’s comfortable that any controversy  surrounding Chui’s departure has dissipated. “I talked to the folks there about that situation, and I understood where everybody was coming from,” he said.

Hogan became editor of VF.com in 2008; his most recent title was executive digital editor. (Disclosure: I’ve done freelance work for Vanity Fair in the past and am working on a project for the magazine now.)

Here’s a farewell bouquet from Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, via email: “I’ve had the pleasure of watching Michael Hogan hone his editorial skills over the past thirteen years from the assistant’s desk to being head of our digital team. I told him when I moved him to the website, that if he did his job well, he wouldn’t be working for me in three years. He beat the deadline. And he will be missed.”

Would it surprise you to know that BoomTown doesn’t really care anymore if TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington sidelines as a blogger while he makes investments in tech companies his tech news site covers?

In a post yesterday, titled “An Update to My Investment Policy,” Arrington made his seemingly cogent arguments that plenty of disclosure made it all “fine,” took one of his typical look-at-me swipes at anyone who dared to question this logic (apparently, we’re crappy “direct” competitors, so we haters have no standing to comment!) and presumably went on his merry investing way.

While I was first irked–because it was an appalling show to many of us cranky standards-insisting whiners–I soon realized Arrington had made a good argument about who he is and, frankly, who he has always been.

In other words, it’s a kind of there-he-goes-again thing, vaguely icky but hardly surprising and completely genuine.

Meanwhile, his new boss, AOL content head Arianna Huffington, pointed me to his post in an email.

When I asked her for an on-the-record comment, as usual, she politely and quickly complied, writing in support of Arrington:

“TechCrunch is committed to transparency. Michael has written about the guidelines he follows–that he rarely writes about companies in which he is an investor, and that, when he does, he clearly discloses this information. The same rules apply when TechCrunch’s writers cover these companies.”

Hold the phone.

Because while I kind of understand where Arrington is coming from, what I don’t understand is how this kind of convenient and on-the-fly rule-making can govern a much larger company whose strongly and repeatedly stated goal by Huffington herself is to create quality journalism.

Since I believed Huffington–whom I like very much as an Internet figure and as a friend–I was confused at what the rules for the whole of AOL content were now.

That’s why I sent her a long new list of questions to answer, which are:

1) What are, if any, the ethical guidelines about making investments for the editorial staff at HuffPo media group properties?

2) Since Arrington now seems to have permission to do so from you, can other editors at AOL properties do the same–that is, make very adjacent investments to what their site covers, as long as they disclose it? For example, can an editor who runs the entertainment site make investments in entertainment companies she/he has coverage responsibility over? (By the way, did you give him permission to make these investments? Did he ask?)

3) Is there anyone who polices what is fair coverage of competitors–i.e. companies competing with companies your editors invest in?

4) If an editor makes investments in a company and someone who works for them writes about that company, does that editor have to recuse himself from the story? Is that even possible?

5) Since you just fired someone for what you called an ethical breach–asking freelancers to work for free and also seemingly defending an attempt to curry favor with an advertiser/client–why is this not an ethical breach?

I had a lot more questions, still unanswered by Huffington, but you can see where this is going.

Simply put, does AOL, which is touting itself as a 21st-century media company, need to have 21st-century rules of the road? Or perhaps not so much?

UPDATE: Now, it is a real clown circus at AOL, with the company declaring that editorial personnel cannot make investments, except Arrington!

“As a rule, in order to avoid conflicts of interests, AOL Huffington Post Media Group editors, writers, and reporters may not have a financial interest in a company or industry that they regularly cover,” AOL said in a statement to Business Insider today, even though I nicely asked for a comment on the issue yesterday. “Arrington operates from a unique position.”

And how! Where do I get such a faboo ethical hall pass from Content Principal Huffington?

I suppose I should go all slouching-towards-Bethlehem here, and wring my hands over this unusual ruling, but what’s the use?

As you might have read: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

How did this all start, especially since I feel like this ridiculous tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot over Arrington’s investment-making might actually be my fault a little bit?

Here’s why:

On Tuesday night around 10 pm (just when I start getting revved up), I wrote a testy email to Arrington’s bosses at AOL–Huffington and CEO Tim Armstrong–as well as the Internet portal’s sharp PR head, asking for a response about what seemed to me to be a glaring conflict of interest at TechCrunch related to new investment activity by Arrington and the site’s coverage of those particular companies he had invested in.

It was all disclosed, of course, but it still felt, as I said, icky.

And, given the recent and loudly stated goal of promoting quality journalism by Huffington–including the recent dismissal of AOL’s Moviefone site editor over what the company considered ethical lapses–it seemed pertinent to ask.

Mostly because I don’t think they actually knew much–if at all–about Arrington’s increasing investing action. Armstrong said as much in an email to me, and Huffington assured me they were going to check it out tout de suite.

But rather than the answer I was waiting on, up popped Arrington’s missive yesterday, which I assume came after his bosses asked for some info on this.

In it, he explained his controversial decision to go back into investing again, in what is clearly a more significant manner.

It was a practice he had abandoned years earlier, apparently after being pecked by detractors for it.

But, dear readers, no more! Let Arrington be Arrington!

And that seems to be a talented blogger with a flare for the dramatic, with a clearly sharply-honed news nose and sassy writing skills, but a scribe who much prefers to be a playah than just an observer and chronicler of that play.

And, after more reflection, I thought: Well, maybe it is a better idea for Arrington to go play with all the boys in Silicon Valley, which would probably be more fun than taking flack for lack of traditional journalistic ethics he never ascribed to in the first place.

I once jokingly nicknamed Arrington Yertle the Turtle after the Dr. Seuss book on one dubious king of one small pond in Sala-Ma-Sond, after he went particularly nuts on the topic of news-embargo breaking.

That diatribe on how he saw news rules–which is to say, there aren’t any that bind him–was vintage Arrington, too. And, after reading his latest post, I suddenly realized that it’s pointless to give a turtle a hard time for not being a fish.

But Huffington is another story. She has put herself in word and deed right into the center of the debate on where news is going on the Web, especially after AOL paid $315 million for her Huffington Post news and opinion site.

Huffington has certainly taken a lot of hits over the years as the HuffPo has grown, some deserved, but she has clearly led an impressive effort.

In fact, I think the cute-kitten and celebrity-loving angle played up by her detractors to dismiss her is silliness, because she and the Huffington Post are clearly more than that and are obviously having a major impact on the future direction of content in the digital age.

But that power she has sought also gives her a responsibility to say exactly what that means on a real and granular and consistent level, beyond the platitudes of wanting to make great journalism that she declares all the time now.

In other words, very specifically: What does Arianna Huffington stand for in regards to journalism? What are her rules and standards and codes? And, perhaps more importantly, what does she not stand up for?

These are questions I hope Huffington–who is really good at smacking back at criticism, too (See: the New York Times’ Bill Keller)–will address in one of her patented blog-xplosions and many times over, too.

Until then, here’s a link to my very long and very detailed ethics disclosure on All Things Digital, which is exactly how our little site thinks it should be in the digital age.

In short, besides signing the Dow Jones Code of Conduct–standard at The Wall Street Journal and other DJ publications–all our editorial staff is required to also pen their own in-plain-English personal and detailed account of disclosures that are pertinent to their job.

(You can read an extensive interview with me on the subject, in fact, which was posted here by Two Bananas Marketing, this week.)

My ATD disclosure is probably the most detailed of all of them, since I gay-married Megan Smith a dozen years ago. She later became a VP at Google, which I cover from time to time, especially related to other companies I focus on more, such as Yahoo.

Most of the time, if you care to read my posts on Google, I am probably tougher and snarkier than not, mostly because I know the search giant from its earliest days.

And, even though I once wrote extensively for the Journal about Google since its founding and before Megan arrived there, I thought it wise to lay it all out in detailed detail.

(By the way, if you want to try to tweak me by asking what News Corp.-owned Fox News’ ethics rules are, I don’t know, as ATD belongs to Dow Jones, which has had them forever. I will say, though, that Roger Ailes often freaks me out.)

In any case, as Arrington preaches, the more disclosure the better, and perhaps I should say even more so here, given the current swirl, by noting explicitly that I garner exactly no financial benefits from my relationship with Megan.

That might seem odd, because she certainly earns more. But I don’t know how much nor do I ask, since we have separate bank accounts and she always pays up–well, almost always–when half the bills are due. While it sounds painfully un-romantic, we only spend overall what each of us can afford equally in an exact 50-50 split.

In addition, I also legally signed away all rights to inheritance–although I had no such marriage rights in the first place, being gay–of Megan’s assets, which are in a trust for her relatives and our sons (for when they are too old to have any fun).

More to the point, I believe this makes me the only person to marry an exec at a hot Silicon Valley company with no prospect of any gold-digging.

Thus, I clearly would make the worst investor ever–not that I ever invest in tech or plan to while I am a reporter covering the sector.

Thank god, I suppose, that Michael Arrington is there to take up the slack.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has certainly had a very busy year, from the continued massive restructuring of the troubled Internet portal to ziggy-zaggy strategic shifts in content and advertising to a series of frenetic acquisitions, capped by the $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post earlier this year.

Also, let’s not forget all those fabulous appearances with the mediagenic Arianna Huffington.

So, it was nice to get Armstrong to calm down for a minute–before he headed off for an off-site in Half Moon Bay, Calif., with his senior staff–and talk about how AOL plans to digest all those things.

That’s especially important, since Wall Street is still wondering about that, too. A lot, in fact, with AOL shares down 29 percent year over year, which is not exactly a shining endorsement by investors of Armstrong’s tenure.

Presumably, he’ll be explaining it all when the company reports its first-quarter earnings in a week, on May 4.

Until then, here’s his video interview with BoomTown:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110426/aols-hyperactive-ceo-tim-armstrong-talks-about-whats-next/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110422/will-yahoo-be-in-play-again-heres-a-few-scenarios-that-could-be-more-than-just-scenarios/ http://allthingsd.com/20110422/will-yahoo-be-in-play-again-heres-a-few-scenarios-that-could-be-more-than-just-scenarios/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:58:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42995

One of the results of Yahoo’s weak earnings report earlier this week has been the renewal of chatter about possible changes in its leadership and even ownership.

And continued investor discomfort with its troubled stock price–Yahoo shares are down 7.25 percent year over year and an astonishing 49 percent on a five-year basis–and the level of renewed grumbling by major institutional shareholders is causing some key players to go back to their PowerPoints to reevaluate various options.

(By way of contrast, Google is down about 4.5 percent year over year–largely due to last week’s earnings release with higher than expected expenses–but still up more than 20 percent for the five years.)

As many might recall, last year Yahoo was under scrutiny by a number of interested parties–from big media companies to other digital players to private equity firms–considering a number of takeover scenarios.

Most of them were just talk and no action resulted, but that did not mean that interest went away.

The truth is, they are still out there and ruminating–this time with what sources describe as a much more amenable Yahoo board, with several of its key members willing to entertain any legitimate offers or ideas to improve the Silicon Valley search giant’s prospects.

In the last go-round, by contrast, Yahoo’s top execs–including CEO Carol Bartz–denied any interest in the swirl of rumors related to a variety of ideas.

That’s definitely changed–at least at the board level–so here are three very credible scenarios of what could happen:

Peetie, Peetie, Yahoo-Sweetie

Late last year, BoomTown wrote a post about the interest that former News Corp. COO and President Peter Chernin–who now owns his own entertainment production company–had in the situation at Yahoo.

As I wrote in November:

But multiple sources from a variety of sides said that Chernin, a well-liked and deeply experienced media and entertainment exec, has been contacted by a number of private equity firms and other investors about his interest in becoming involved should any of the various and sundry scenarios around the Internet giant pan out.

And Chernin, many sources said, has expressed a definite interest in the situation, perhaps because he was deeply involved in a previous deal when running News Corp.

At the time, it involved combining the media giant’s Myspace social networking site with Yahoo and also Microsoft’s portal MSN and creating a new company, code-named “TrafficCo.”

Indeed, that interest remains for Chernin, who has also been an increasingly active investor, including in the digital sector. He is an angel funder of the hot social media app start-up Flipboard, and also just joined the board of the popular Pandora music service.

The most likely possible scenarios have him joining with deep-pocketed partners, including Providence Equity Partners and, yes, Microsoft, as well as investment banks or advisory firms, such as Morgan Stanley and Code Advisors.

The approach being considered–which would only be done in a friendly way, with the cooperation of Yahoo’s board–would center on making a large enough investment in its shares, allowing the group to take control of the management and the board, putting Chernin in as chairman and maybe CEO (or with a new CEO–see next section).

If Microsoft were involved–and Chernin has strong ties there–such a scenario might include folding all its online properties into Yahoo and renegotiating its rocky search partnership, too.

This is an idea that intrigues a lot of people–including current Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock, co-founder Jerry Yang and other board members–who have indicated recently to several investors and dealmakers a willingness to listen to credible player such as Chernin.

But, in this scenario, it would be up to Chernin and his partners to make a prosposal, said sources, and he might decide that the complexity of getting the power to make big changes at Yahoo is too big to tackle.

In addition, Chernin remains a successful Hollywood player, with several major television and movie projects in the works, as well as big investment possibilities in Asia.

“Does he want the headache of Yahoo at this point in his career?” asked one person, among many Chernin has talked to recently about becoming involved in the company. “Would you?”

Maybe so, if it would provide a big financial windfall. Many think an exec with a reputation like Chernin’s could easily begin to move Yahoo’s moribund stock upward quickly.

ABC (Anybody But Carol)

Here’s one truth: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz does not get proper credit for a number of moves she has made since coming to the company two years ago, including cleaning up the messy corporate structure, de-complexifying garbled systems, cutting costs and bringing its far-flung operations into line.

Yahoo’s stock is certainly doing better than when she arrived in early January of 2009, when it was in the $12 range compared to its current $16 price point.

But here’s another: That stock price now includes more than $10 in solid assets–cash and Yahoo’s much more valuable stakes in China’s Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan–leaving very little true share appreciation.

And here are more truths: Bartz’s inability to get revenues growing, innovations flowing, promising start-ups acquired and–most importantly–to stop the continual exodus of talent out the door of Yahoo has made her tenure shakier than ever.

Add to that making its relationships with Asian partners more tense, almost no traction in key mobile, video and social arenas, a record of loud public declarations that have fallen flat and serious troubles in Yahoo’s search and online partnership with Microsoft–a deal Bartz struck and is charged with managing–recently highlighted in Yahoo’s earnings earlier this week.

As shareholder activist Eric Jackson, who has long agitated for change at Yahoo, wrote this week in a post:

“The truth is that investors are fed up with Bartz. Their enmity towards Bartz is palpable when you talk to them. Bartz talked a big game coming into the job and she hasn’t delivered. It’s that simple.”

Well, not that simple and maybe not fair, but it’s also clear that no one thinks Bartz will be re-upped when her contract is up in 18 months.

Thus, it’s no surprise that ideas of other possible leaders of Yahoo are being contemplated now.

Here’s the short list I have made of my choices: Akamai President and Yahoo board member David Kenny; former Microsoft exec and current Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson; former AOL CEO and current News Corp. digital head Jon Miller; and Nikesh Arora, current Chief Business Officer and sales head at Google.

There are plenty more to pick from, of course, and any could be installed in conjunction with an effort such as Chernin’s.

AOL Under the Hoop

No good Yahoo scenario plotting can be contemplated without including AOL and its flashy CEO Tim Armstrong.

Armstrong has made no secret of wanting to get ahold of Yahoo properties to apply the strategy he has been trying at AOL to get it moving again.

Which is: To become the premiere digital media company.

Which is actually Yahoo’s new motto–although arguably, in word and deed, Armstrong has been much more active in pushing the concept and narrative.

That includes his incessant acquisitions of all kinds of online media properties, including the big fish–the $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post and the coronation of its even-flashier co-founder Arianna Huffington as content chief.

Armstrong has certainly not been averse to the idea of a Yahoo-AOL hookup with him at the top, and has been actively talking to anyone interested in such a deal.

And things could get a lot more interesting if AOL linked with a bigger strategic partner, such as News Corp. or Disney or even Google, Armstrong’s former stomping grounds.

Still, wishing does not make it so, especially with a much smaller and weaker set of assets than Yahoo and a still poor record on goosing its advertising sales.

AOL’s stock is down 30 percent year over year, as investors still worry about Armstrong’s ability to turn the company around, which kind of puts him in the same situation as Bartz.

“AOL is waiting under the hoop for whatever happens, which is a good place to be,” said one person close to the situation. “Why not?”

Why not, indeed–so, let the games begin.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110422/will-yahoo-be-in-play-again-heres-a-few-scenarios-that-could-be-more-than-just-scenarios/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110412/huffington-post-writer-wants-his-cut-from-aol-sale-how-does-105-million-sound/ http://allthingsd.com/20110412/huffington-post-writer-wants-his-cut-from-aol-sale-how-does-105-million-sound/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:10:39 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31695 Here’s the inevitable class-action suit from bloggers asking for a cut of Huffington Post’s $315 million payday. This one is filed by journalist and labor activist Jonathan Tasini, who says he and other bloggers who gave the site free stories should now get paid.

Tasini figures the volunteer copy Huffington ran for the past five years ended up generating a third of its sale value, or $105 million. But he doesn’t explain how he got to that number.

More important, his complaint, filed in New York’s Southern District court this morning, doesn’t explain why the site should be expected to pay for work people gave it for free.

Instead, Tasini’s argument is in large part directed at the state of Internet content-making today, where users and contributors are frequently asked to help build a Web site without getting any financial compensation. A sample:

TheHuffingtonPost.com’s continued assertion that it, alone, should be enriched by the valuable content provided by Plaintiff and the Classes has the broad detrimental effect of setting an artificially low price for the valuable digital content created by Plaintiff and the Classes, depressing the market for such content and, over the long term, having a serious depressing effect on the value of intellectual content being created by Plaintiff and the Classes and on the ability of Plaintiff and the Classes to support themselves as creators of high quality, engaging, digital content.

As someone who makes digital content myself (I’ll let you guys judge its quality and engagement levels) I’m sympathetic to this kind of thinking. But only in a tears-in-beers kind of way, not a file-a-suit-in-federal-court kind of way.

Because I don’t understand where any of this is illegal. Just (arguably) unpleasant.

Just as important, Huffington Post’s main argument against not paying its bloggers–or the many Web sites whose stuff it aggregated quite aggressively–is that it compensates them with exposure.

And while you can argue over the value of that exposure, you can’t argue over the basic premise. And if you did, you should have stopped handing in columns a long time ago.

I was going to ask Tasini about this on his conference call this morning, but I bailed out as soon as I heard him announce that bloggers were “modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation.”  No point in sticking around for that kind of tortured metaphor.

But, hyperbole aside, as I noted two months ago, this isn’t the first time AOL has been involved in a lawsuit over unpaid labor. And that last one, filed in 1999, did indeed result in a win for the plaintiffs–in 2010. As I wrote earlier:

Still, you never know! And I’m sure there’s at least one attorney, somewhere, who’s ready to try it out. Let’s check back in a decade and see how it panned out.

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