It’s been flatly disproven.

Apparently you haven’t picked up the hint yet that the strength of your insistence or lack of qualifiers does not make the assertion any more correct. The quotes you provided certainly did not add one iota of truth to the statement; even Kristol’s own statement uses the exact term “liberal media” which strongly dissuades me from believing he thinks there is no such thing.

The Free Republic is notorious for allowing such hate rants as I cited, then scrubbing them from their site and asserting that they never existed.

I do not discount that from the realm of possibility, as I have repeatedly seen Michael Moore make a number of outrageous claims and then delete his material when it is demonstrated to be patently false, to the point where some people no longer link to his material, but to cached pages showing what was present at the time of printing. However, couldn’t one draw a parallel between the purging of these articles from FR et al and the purging of like articles from Kos et al?

But again, I find myself at a disadvantage because you insist on equating FR and HP as counterparts for their political views, despite being the only one on the thread intent on putting the Freepers to such lofty heights. It’s apples and oranges, and the left is to the blogosphere as the right is to talk radio punditry, there’s a severe imbalance in talent, success and receivership. Isn’t that the whole point of this article, that HP is achieving a level of success that doesn’t really have an equivalent among blogs?

If I were to say to you that Rush Limbaugh’s success was the result of shaping the debate around the facts, you’d probably take exception to that. If I were to say that it’s because of a combination of slick production values, broad marketing and a whole lot of sensationalism, you’d probably agree. Does that give you no pause at all to consider what I’m saying? Am I supposed to read your suggestion that “your guys” are the arbiters of truth and ingenuous to a fault, and “my guys” spew only hateful comments for lack of anything intelligent to say, and that is the more reasonable view of people’s thoughts and motives? Really?

The one part of this article to which I take exception is her suggestion that they are shaping the debate based on facts. Half the truth is still a lie to me, and until either side is willing to stretch themselves beyond only the half they care about, The Truth ™ is a laughable place to hang one’s hat in the political arena.

Meanwhile, the rest of her comments and the author’s article framing them paint a broader and more compelling picture. The keyword in the headline is “passion” and that is wear they hit the nail on the head. The sensationalist nature of political punditry got a segment of the population engaged in their work. The second part of the success stew is their persistence, the fact that the people whom they brought on board with their direction also had the commitment to see it through. For most people, that combination of passion and commitment (which are separate issues from the debate about facts) are enough to provide modest success.

The third pillar IMO is design. HP is dynamic, vibrant and eye-grabbing; it makes good use of a number of 2.0 principles. I would not say this is inherently necessary; craigslist is about as bland as a website is ever going to be, and Drudge has built his success off scooping the mass media and making the rest of his site little more than a news aggregate. It worked largely because aggregate tools didn’t exist then in the way they do today. But 9 times out of 10, dynamic beats bland, especially in a world where the market is saturated with people using a lot of default settings and skins on their Wordpress and Movable Type.

A fourth attribute specific to HP is that they moved beyond their original demographic. They could have been strictly a politically-driven blog and enjoyed moderate success, but by having a wide variety of news, they give readers a reason to come beyond just reading the latest diatribe and saying “lol Repugnants”. Having more than one reason to hit a site results in longer stays and more visits. See also: google.

Then there’s the golden egg she completely neglected to mention (as far as the article is concerned): a crapload of venture capital…

Kristol’s recent article in the Weekly Standard, published yesterday, uses the term “liberal media” three times in the first two paragraphs. Can you blame me for questioning how all of my quotes acknowledging media bias are magically wrong and all of your quotes denying it are magically right?

Former RNC chair Rich Bond: “There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media]…. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one.” Former Sec of State James Baker: “There were days and times and events we might have had some complaints [but] on balance I don’t think we had anything to complain about.” Former GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan: “I’ve gotten balanced coverage, and broad coverage–all we could have asked. For heaven sakes, we kid about the ‘liberal media,’ but every Republican on earth does that.” William Kristol: “I admit it. The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.”

If you’re content to lower your standards to the current status quo of the political climate, or suggest that Huffington is only playing by the rules as written, that’s your prerogative, but I still find such permissiveness to be exactly the reason that it’s absurd to suggest they are holding a high standard of publication and/or conduct.

Standards differ. I am not offended by most uses of profanity. I am offended by racial, sexual, ethnic, and religious slurs. On the rare occasions that I have seen them used on Huffington, I have seen them challenged. I see a big difference between saying that, for example, Bush is a traitor who wants to sell the US down the river to his corporate buddies, and laughing over the image of Hillary Clinton being gang-raped.

The Free Republic is notorious for allowing such hate rants as I cited, then scrubbing them from their site and asserting that they never existed.

I held off on bringing up Kos, but since the author mentioned him, I should note that his site posted not one but numerous articles questioning the paternity of Sarah Palin’s grandchild and even demanding paternity testing. I find that to be extremely offensive but again, I could just be less permissive.

Since I post somewhat more frequently on the Kos than anywhere else (surprise!), I can speak more authoritatively to this. Yes, there were numerous articles about Sarah Palin’s grandchild and so forth. Without exception, they were posted by people who had appeared from nowhere, posted these offensive diaries, and disappeared. The community’s reaction was very, very strong and very, very negative, with blistering (and sometimes profanity-laced) demands that the diaries in question be deleted and the author(s) banned. Many felt that some of those diaries were posted by conservative “trolls” putting such diaries up in order to make the Kos look bad, but as far as I know, no conclusive proof of such was ever secured.

I can read, and yes I can. Can this method of discussion possibly lead us forward?

It’s been flatly disproven. You are free to continue asserting the truth of your stance. I don’t think SP is the venue to continue this particular discussion. You are free to contact me for further info on the matter.

Maybe we can seque into an old fashioned Mac vs. PC debate just to lighten up the thread!

Sagewing is correct. This discussion is veering far, far away from what SP covers. It’s an old and reprehensible trick to make a long argument and then declare the issue closed for whatever reason, so I won’t say “we should stop this now” and therefore give myself the last word. Please, Stephen or anyone else, feel free to rebut and retort as you like. But I’ve made the points I think I needed to make (beat them into the ground, more like it…), so I will not comment further.

And for the record, I use PCs but wish with every little scrap of heart I have left that I had gone with Macs.

Not only is this a hateful observation, it is demonstrably wrong.

It’s hateful to say she’s pandering to a combustible segment of the population? Or to say that her success is based on popularism? Are you sure you’re not just victimizing her based on something you’re reading INTO this observation?

The bugaboo of it has existed for years, even after such conservatives as William Kristol have admitted that the so-called “liberal media” doesn’t in fact exist.

You might want to revisit just how strongly this point is “proven”. Kristol’s recent article in the Weekly Standard, published yesterday, uses the term “liberal media” three times in the first two paragraphs. Can you blame me for questioning how all of my quotes acknowledging media bias are magically wrong and all of your quotes denying it are magically right?

But if you allow for the rather “liberal” use of profanity, you won’t find that many truly offensive comments and diaries on Huffington.

That’s a nice qualifier: so long as we say it’s okay for people to refer to politicians in some of the worst possible terms, substitute their names and their parties’ names with mockeries, accuse them of essentially attempting to destroy the entire world so they can make five more bucks (intentionally dramatic for the sake of brevity), and so forth, then there’s not really that much on the site that’s REALLY offensive. If you’re content to lower your standards to the current status quo of the political climate, or suggest that Huffington is only playing by the rules as written, that’s your prerogative, but I still find such permissiveness to be exactly the reason that it’s absurd to suggest they are holding a high standard of publication and/or conduct.

Again, I offer the blatant, over-the-top racism, sexism, and other complete slime from the Free Republic as a counter to anything you can find on Huffington or any other liberal blog with any real audience.

You can if you’d like, but I’ve never promoted that site or any other as a model for discourse. The difference is that I think the political climate is far too toxic in both directions, and prefer to see both sides raise their standards, rather than toss out the “he did it too” excuse, which I consider a skirt of the issue, and entirely unproductive.

FWIW, I went ahead and visited the Free Republic and found the following headlines on their front page: Methane is escaping from an Arctic sea bed. Thomas Sowell opining about the ultimate cost of the federal bailout. A copy of Rush Limbaugh’s show notes. A link to a “5-reader blog” as you put it. An accident on a sub. The Treasury wants foreign help with the bailout. Libertarians lost their suit in Texas. The first non-sourced article I found was from a McCain canvasser asking why the people he was calling seemed uninterested in talking to him. The site had little enough information to dissuade me from a quick return, but I had a hard time finding the racism sexism and other bile and such that you claimed was preeminent on their site. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place or something.

I held off on bringing up Kos, but since the author mentioned him, I should note that his site posted not one but numerous articles questioning the paternity of Sarah Palin’s grandchild and even demanding paternity testing. I find that to be extremely offensive but again, I could just be less permissive.

I’ve followed this argument for years, and frankly, no you can’t.

I can read, and yes I can. Can this method of discussion possibly lead us forward?

The bottom, unassailable line is that the “based on the facts” is a canard, and the real basis of success is “based on sensationalism that drums up a passionate crowd”. There shouldn’t be any shame in that, sensationalism sells in ALL forms of media. Just most of them don’t try to wrap it in The Truth ™.

I don’t personally read her blog very often. But I definitely see her as a role model when it comes to building a blog empire in record time.

Cheers.

Thanks for giving an intelligent rubuttal. I’m breathing fine again, and my blood pressure is back down.

:)

What a tragically flawed and bizarre analysis of Huffington’s success as it relates to the web industry and web technologies. Her success is built on pandering to the radical liberal smear machine, and the growth of her group is more based on popularism than any good business or technology practices.

Not only is this a hateful observation, it is demonstrably wrong. Whether you like Huffington’s politics or not, it is indisputable that the blog has shown the rest of the blogging world how to do what it does. (And what’s wrong with popularism? Are you saying that a popular site must necessarily be a bad site–unless, I suppose, it agrees with your views?) As for the “radical liberal smear machine,” I dispute that contention absolutely. It does not exist. The bugaboo of it has existed for years, even after such conservatives as William Kristol have admitted that the so-called “liberal media” doesn’t in fact exist. Makes for a nice straw man to bleat about.

The mention of Huffington’s desire to be more factual is essentially adding a bickering and debating point to the discussion that removes any chance of a relevant message coming from this article (let alone a discussion).

“Relevant” as in, “I agree with its politics.” Sorry, but you’ve shot yourself in the foot already.

Frankly I am surprised that such an [obviously] politically slanted organization would even be discussed on Sitepoint. Was it not obvious that the comments would quickly start referencing Fox and Air America? Is it not fair to say that the author is almost certainly swayed by the content of Huffington’s blathering more than he is impressed by her cutting-edge understanding of web technologies?

Again, to dismiss legitimate political viewpoints as “blathering” merely shows how unable you are to divorce your political views from your technological critiquing. I will agree with one thing: neither Fox News nor Air America do a particularly good job in running their own blogs.

You must have been on vacation the time they posted a picture of Joe Lieberman photoshopped with blackface.

No, I didn’t see it, and I would have howled about it had I laid eyes on it. It was a bad decision by both the diarist and Huffington to allow such garbage to lower the level of discourse. But I disagree with your “one of countless examples” line. You found one, and doubtless there are a few others. But if you allow for the rather “liberal” use of profanity, you won’t find that many truly offensive comments and diaries on Huffington. I can attest to just how difficult it is to moderate a strong, opinionated community. Unless you almost smother commentary with Draconian moderation, you are inevitably going to have some ugly commentary and even posts creep in. Again, I offer the blatant, over-the-top racism, sexism, and other complete slime from the Free Republic as a counter to anything you can find on Huffington or any other liberal blog with any real audience. (If you find some babbling idiot posting hate rants on a pro-Obama blog with five regular commenters, don’t bother posting it. I know they’re out there. I stay away from them.)

Unfortunately for your claim, the fact of the matter is that the news media routinely votes 80-90% Democrat, and if the situation warrants it, I can provide quotes from officials at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and numerous other sources confirming the elephant in this particular room.

I’ve followed this argument for years, and frankly, no you can’t.

There is value is looking at what makes Huff, Kos, Drudge, and others successful, as well as looking at the successful web campaigns of politicians like Barack Obama and Ron Paul.

Josh, you’re right. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Drudge allows comments on his material. He may have a separate blog, but I don’t think so. I pointed out in my first comment that many (not all) conservative blogs either disallow comments entirely, or so heavily moderate commentary that even the most polite dissent is deleted and its perpetrators banned. Ron Paul is a terrific Internet phenomonon deserving of exploration. I disagree with his politics on almost every level, but I acknowledge that what he’s done is amazing.

Nothing in that hints at my political views — that’s simply the facts of what happened at the event.

Again, true. The assumption is (apparently) that because you wrote approvingly of a liberal political blog, you must by default support it, and therefore you’re involved in some sort of liberal conspiracy:

it’s just hard to believe that there wasn’t some editorial swing on the decision to write this article in particular

My own experience on Sitepoint has been very accepting. I regularly post on the design and coding forums, and have often asked for advice on my former site, which was frankly and unapologetically liberal (though as fact-based as I could make it). I got wonderful advice and assistance from people I knew to be deep-dyed conservatives, without any reference to the political content. Hopefully I’ve been able to pay those favors forward a bit, to SP community members of whatever political stripe. I don’t think Josh was trying to inject partisan politics into the SP discussion on any level. Had the first few posters not reacted as harshly (and as predictably) as they did, I would never have commented on the politics of Huffington. Josh’s column was never about that. Unfortunately, some conservatives (and liberals) cannot divorce their partisan politics from any other issue. Huffington does what it does very, very well, and has risen in just a few years to be one of the most pre-eminent political blogs in existence. That phenomenon deserves examination regardless of political ideology.

The only part of the article that touches on politics is this:

Huffington drew some big laughs when O’Reilly said that he thought she had a lot in common with News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, because they both seek use news as a vehicle to shape the way people think. “Huge difference,” said Huffington to a round of applause, “we want to shape the debate based on facts.”

Nothing in that hints at my political views — that’s simply the facts of what happened at the event. She did get big laughs and a round of applause (one of the largest of the convention in my opinion). That’s just reporting, not editorial. :)

With all due respect you didn’t have to say this…

“On a personal note, though my own politics tend toward the liberal side of things…”

I think we all figured that out are are own.

Peace brother!

So, I’ll just comment on the decision to write this article: it was my own, wholly and completely. What swayed me to write it was simply that sitting in the keynote hall Huffington’s conversation with Tim O’Reilly struck me as the most interesting and relevant of the day (actually, that’s not true — Irene Grief (sp?) from IBM had the most interesting keynote, but I didn’t think there was a post to be had in it). Huffington’s was also the most reacted to by the audience there (generally positive — though we were in New York).

On a personal note, though my own politics tend toward the liberal side of things, it wasn’t politics that informed my decision to write about Arianna Huffington’s appearance at the Expo. And I actually find Drudge’s operation far more interesting in terms how and why it is successful. You can bet if Matt Drudge had come out of hiding to give a keynote about what makes the Drudge Report tick, I’d have written about it. ;)