Posts tagged Arianna Huffington

What Policies for Writers Investing in the Fields they Cover?

Yesterday, TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington published a piece that updated his investment policy.

Today, All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher shares some questions she has for Arrington’s boss Arianna Huffington (AOL owns TechCrunch):

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?

That Smell You Hear is Conflict of Interest

Time once was that a “watchdog” press would closely scrutinize the work of elected officials and the powerful.

Adversarial journalism was its bread and butter, and relationships with those covered were held at arms length.

Time once was.

Via the James Rainey of the LA Times:

Imagine if the San Francisco Chronicle beefed up coverage of the state capital and asked Gov. Jerry Brown which agencies deserved the most coverage. Or what if Fox News planned to take a closer look at the United Nations with the blessing of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon?

The snickering that ensued would be prolonged, followed by a righteous blast of indignation from other news outlets. Journalism born out of such cooperation would rightly stink of conflict.

That will be at least the initial aroma around the latest journalistic initiative by America’s fastest-growing news outlet, Patch.com. The AOL-owned operation announced this week that it would open hyper-local news sites in Newark, N.J., “in partnership with Newark Mayor Cory Booker.”

“It will be great to have their help, since they are so plugged into the community, to help us identify the places to start,” Arianna Huffington tells Rainey. “But that does not in any way immunize them from criticism or … the kind of journalism we would need to engage in.”

Arianna Strikes Back

Earlier today we noted an article in which Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times, took the Huffington Post to task for the way in which it aggregates content.

Later in the day, Arianna struck back:

I wonder what site he’s been looking at. Not ours, as even a casual look at HuffPost will show. Even before we merged with AOL, HuffPost had 148 full-time editors, writers, and reporters engaged in the serious, old-fashioned work of traditional journalism. As long ago as 2009, Frank Rich praised the work of our reporters in his column. Paul Krugman more recently singled out the work of our lead finance writer. Columbia Journalism Review has credited our work for advancing the public’s understanding of the national foreclosure crisis, and a pair of our Washington reporters recently received a major journalism prize. Matthew Yglesias, Felix Salmon, Catherine Rampell, are among the many others who have cited the work of our reporters. Did Keller not notice that? 

She goes on but we leave it at that.

It’s not our purpose here to amplify snark fights in the media space. But, with a high profile attack against her, we think it right to note her response.