[topher]

Interesting. I wish someone would give Jim Rob $315,000 for his work on FreeRepublic.com He pioneered this type of media, not Ariana...

[eaglestar]

Liberals eating liberals and their babies.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

It was $315M, and this was the amount paid by AOL to all owners of The Huffington Post, of which Ariana Huffington was one (and apparently the largest share owner.) But, like all businesses there are debts and obligations that have to be netted out of that total. The most serious analysts I have read on this subject estimate that she cleared between $12M and $18M on the transaction.

[Mr. K]

If JimRob got $300 million I would be HAPPY for him~!!

In fact I wish he WOULD accept money and adnvertising for this site

it is too important to go begging every quarter

which reminds me, i need to send in another donation

I might as well just put it on auto pay on my credit card

[Lorianne]

AOL lays off 900 jobs as it Purchases the Huffington Post

http://kara.allthingsd.com/files/2008/12/14-arianna-port-280.jpg

900 people! Yet they’ve spent weeks slamming Scot Walker over union negotiations. I bet these 900 people wish they could have negotiated for their jobs!

[abb]

LOL! They’re carrying on like what they write is worth paying for!

[JerseyHighlander]

The unpaid writers are actually correct here.

There is a case study on this, when Times Co. bought/acquired About.com .

Times Co. paid some ridiculous sum of about $400k PER columnist... then went and replaced 25% of them within the first year, increased columnist headcount by 25% in the first year, and that in turn boosted ad revenues by 50%.

The columnists at About.com saw NO money from the acquisition. They were basically treated as slave labor and forced to sign non-compete clauses so they couldn’t branch out and start their own websites.

Of course, About.com sorta went bust soon after,

http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4262
“In March 2005, the Times Co. purchased About.com for $410 million, its largest acquisition since it bought the Boston Globe from the Taylor family for $1.1 billion in 1993. “

Everyone in the business is now looking back at the About.com acquisition and trying to carve out their piece of the inflated pie while the going is good.

[SuziQ]

I guess the newspaper guild is just echoing Obama, in wanting the HuffPo to ‘spread the wealth around’.