With an estimated 110
million unique visitors a month, The Huffington Post reigns as the most
popular blog in America’s blogosphere. Its next closest blog competitor is
gossip website TMZ, which racks up about 30 million unique visitors a month. No
matter how you feel about The Huffington Post, it’s clearly the leader of the
blog pack.
Founded in 2005, The
Huffington Post has been praised by fans and panned by critics.
Naysayers have complained that the blog is, among other things,
shallow, sexist and “predictably liberal,” according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
Some have blasted the blog for raking in revenue but failing to pay many of its
contributors; I happen to be one of the unpaid contributors. Perhaps the
sharpest criticism centers on The Huffington Post’s practice of aggregating a
lot of content from other websites but not spending a dime on it.
The Huffington Post, now owned by AOL, does have its share of
defenders, though. For instance, Jack Shafer of Slate.com took traditional
journalists to task for whining about The Huffington Post’s alleged pilfering
of content. “Borrowing, sponging, lifting, scrounging, leaching, pinching,
and outright theft of other publications’ work is firmly in the American
journalistic tradition,” Shafer wrote. Data journalist Nate Silver hasn’t been
wholehearted in his admiration for The Huffington Post, but he has called it “innovative”
and “effective.”
To be sure, The Huffington Post has been effective in delivering
information; if that weren’t the case, millions of people wouldn’t bother
reading the blog every day. However, The Huffington Post never will be confused
with high-brow media outlets like The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and
The Atlantic. Those three traditional media outlets tend to be more mainstream
in their approaches to delivering information.
Plus, in terms of substance, The New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal and The Atlantic have more heft, if you will, than The Huffington Post
does. While The Huffington Post might be considered a robust snack, the three
traditional media outlets cited are more like a full meal. To be fair, The
Huffington Post does employ a cadre of journalists who produce top-notch work,
but much of the blog’s content is cranked out by those unpaid bloggers I
mentioned before.
Furthermore, the writing on The Huffington Post, while certainly
not bad, generally does not rise to the esteemed level of The New York Times,
the Wall Street Journal or The Atlantic. Those traditional media outlets are
the meat, while The Huffington Post is the potatoes. Nonetheless, I’d hazard a
guess that readers of The Huffington Post are satisfied with the potatoes and
aren’t necessarily hungry for the meat. If readers want the meat, they can find
it elsewhere on the media menu.
In the end, The Huffington Post serves its purpose — it delivers
reliable information at the speed of the Internet. It doesn’t pretend to be The
New York Times; if it tried, it would flop. Instead, The Huffington Post excels
at cooking up a stew of breaking news, opinion, celebrity gossip, political
happenings, lifestyle features and other “ingredients.” And, by and large, The
Huffington Post adheres to an array of best practices for a blog. Here are several
examples:
- It properly mixes words, photos, video and other storytelling elements.
- It knows its place. The Huffington Post strives to be a lot of things to a lot of people, yet its voice and tone are distinct. While some blogs succeed by targeting a certain niche, the one niche that The Huffington Post really goes after is the liberal political crowd. Otherwise, the world is The Huffington Post’s niche.
- Its design is consistent throughout.
- It publishes accurate content on a regular basis.
- It knows its audience.
Early on, some detractors
doubted whether The Huffington Post would survive, or at least thought the blog
would struggle mightily. Yet The Huffington Post has proven its staying power,
and has shown the blogosphere how to produce a well-read blog every single day.
Sources
John, I must say your writing is creative, professional, informative and so enjoyable! The presentation of researched content is both appealing and eye-opening to how the Huffington post is created, I do agree with your comment, most want the potatoes and not meat- Very well composed - Dr. T
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