Shortly after midnight, a merger was announced between Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post and AOL. The NY Times has called the merger an “unlikely pairing of two online media giants.”
Unlikely? I don’t see anything unlikely about it all. Arianna Huffington created the Huffington Post to make money. And making money she has:
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…
The sale means a huge payout for Huffington Post investors and holders of its stock and options, who stand to profit earlier than if the company had waited to grow large enough for an initial public offering.
I gave up reading the Huff Po on a regular basis quite sometime ago. The expansion into entertainment scandal news and so many headlines “aggregated from other news source,” steered me away.
Politically, it will be interesting to see the direction the HuffPo with this move. The key question will be, will Arianna remain loyal to the progressive left or will she move more to right? My guess is she’ll sell out the left some. After all, Arianna has long played ”center” foil on the KCRW’s show Left, Right & Center. Stay tuned…
In her statement on the HuffPo, Arianna called the deal “A Merger of Visions.” The visions remain to be seen.
Memeorandum and Mediagazer have all the buzz.
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