Huff and Puff and Arianna's Blown in

Many have criticized Arianna Huffington for "selling out" to media giant AOL in 2011 for $315m.

People were extremely up in arms because of how Huffington profited off the sale of her company, which was predominately a citizen journalism site. Her bloggers were not paid for their posts, and yet Huffington was profiting off of their work.

Tim Rutten, an LA Times columnist went as far as to say of the HuffPost, "To grasp its business model... you need to picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates."

Journalism professionals criticized Huffington, as did her own bloggers, demanding that she donate some of the money from the AOL deal to her contributors. However, this has not happened, and I am not sure how I feel about this issue.

I understand both sides. Obviously, bloggers are putting in a lot of effort for these posts. They are giving them to HuffPost and some feel a certain loyalty to the site. They want their fearless leader to give them a little bit more than just a byline for their work.

But on the other end, HuffPost is a huge name. These bloggers are getting a huge boost for their personal opinions and content. If they had posted the same feature/blog to their own personal site, they would never get the same amount of views on their own that HuffPost provides. The liberal cousin of the Drudge Report, HuffPost gives bloggers exposure. And while they don't offer direct links to sites as Drudge does, they still are giving bloggers new viewers simply by listing their names.

The site also allows for truly opinionated content, and bloggers are able to express their political views in their pieces without feeling as though they will be censored by mainstream advertisers.

But perhaps the most interesting development in this case happened last June, when Verizon bought out AOL, and therefore Huffington Post as well. This raises a lot of concerns about Verizon's interest in what its customers are looking at, including HuffPost, and how this will affect our privacy.