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Day 1: December 1, 2014

Stories: 

1.  Hacked: Documents Reveal A Hollywood Studio's Stunning Gender and Race Gap

2. Conservatives Call On Rick Perry To Halt Execution Of Scott Panetti

3.Iran Bombing Islamic State In Iraq, U.S. Official Confirms

4. Obama's Plan To Close Guantanamo Suffers Another Setback

5.The Cheap Oil Curse

6.Obama, the Telcos and Getting Net Neutrality Right

7. Information-Rich Democracy Is Key to Good Governance

8. Bill Cosby Resigns From University’s Board of Trustees

9. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Body Transformation Will Blow Your Mind

10. G.url Power

(Huffington Post, 2014)

GRADE: 32% F

Day 2: December 2, 2014

 

Stories: 

 

1.  Rick Perry Silent Under Pressure To Delay Execution Of Severely Mentally Ill Man

2. Iran Uranium Partner Could Get Gift From Lame-Duck Congress

3. The Paid Vacation Route to Full Employment

4. Between Ferguson and the Reaction to the Star Wars Trailer, Racism is Alive and Louder Than Ever

5. John Boehner Plots A Way Around A Government Shutdown

6. Sony Struggles To Recover After Hack

7. Woman Claims Bill Cosby Sexually Assaulted Her When She Was 15

8. 6 Ways to Do Holiday Lights Better Than Anyone Else

9. Pictures Of The Day

10. What Was Sort of Lost In Our Transition Into Parenthood

GRADE: 36.3% F

Day 3: December 3, 2014

Who owns them?

According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, The Huffington Post has been owned by America Online, or AOL, since 2011. The site was launched in 2005 as a "conversational group blog and aggregator" (Coddington, 2014) by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti. The site has shown significant growth and expansions on its topics including technology, politics, sports, science, and many more.

 

How many are owned by the same parent company?

AOL owns "80 websites under various brands, including the tech blogs Engadget and Techcrunch, the financial site DailyFinance and the sports blog network Fanhouse, as well as the mapping service Mapquest and Weblogs Inc. AOL also cofounded the popular celebrity news site TMZ, though that site is now owned by Warner Brothers" (Coddington, 2014).

 

Are any owned by independent sources?

The Huffington Post is owned by AOL, a company that was owned by Time Warner up until 2009 when the executives of the company decided to make AOL an independent company (Smith, 2009).

 

What is their annual revenue?

The Huffington Post’s annual revenue was hard to hunt down. In fact, when AOL’s CEO, Tim Armstrong, was interviewed by Henry Blodget at “Ignition”, he would not say exactly how much the company is making but “did not object when presented with a hypothetical revenue figure of $200 million” (Rossof, 2014).

 

Where do they get their revenue from?

The Huffington post has paid and unpaid employees (the Post does not pay those who volunteer to write blogs for it), however, it receives a large amount of traffic that was “tripled from 25 million people to 84 million after its deal with AOL” (Saba, 2013). Like many of today’s media, the Huffington post acquires its revenue from advertising to its 84 million readers.

 

What’s their reader/viewer share?

According to AOL, The Huffington Post reaches over 84 million people a month. (AOL, 2014). According to their website, "the Huffington Post has 81 million unduplicated monthly worldwide unique visitors who generate 1.1 billion page views” (AOL, 2014). and has seen 12% YoY growth in unique visitors.

 

Is there a particular story that “made” this news venue particular popular?

When it began, the Huffington Post had more of a political focus, however, the site had guest columnists that included celebrities and public figures. Although they haven’t changed those aspects of the site, they now include a variety of sections such as: technology, politics, business,world news, environmental issues, sports, lifestyle and entertainment. The Huffington post also uses aggregated stories from different news sources (Coddington, 2014).

 

Was there a story that this news venue is particular well known for scooping?

The Huffington Post received the Pulitzer prize for David Wood’s “Beyond the Battlefield” in 2012. This win was an important event for the Post because it is not very often that online news are eligible for it.

 

How does the news site frame itself? How is it perceived (conservative/liberal/moderate/completely unreliable/well-respected for fairness/etc)?

The Huffington Post began as a liberal site to contrast the conservative “Drudge Report” and began with a political focus (Nieman Journalism Lab, 2014). The Post defines itself as “the destination for news, blogs and original content offering coverage of US politics, entertainment, style, world news, technology and comedy” (Huffington, 2014). Most view the Huffington Post as a liberal news provider.

 

 

GRADE: 42% F

Stories: 

 

  1. New York City Protests Eric Garner Decision

  2. Grand Jury Declines To Indict NYPD Officer In Chokehold Death Of Eric Garner

  3. Let's Draft Fewer Wall Streeters Into Washington For A Change

  4. Justice Department To Investigate Eric Garner's Death

  5. Cracked Wide Open Around Race

  6. Al-Qaeda affiliate threatens to kill U.S. hostage after rescue attempt in Yemen

  7. Inside the Battle Over the CIA Torture Report

  8. What I Always Meant to Say to My Young Adult Children

  9. I Learned To Be a Feminist From My Single Mom

  10. We Dare You Not To Smile While Reading This

 

Analysis

The Huffington Post failed all three days. It had a relatively large amount of core stories compared to peripheral ones. Spanning three days, the Post had 19 core stories and 11 peripheral. Though "HuffPo" had only 3-4 peripheral stories a day, its core stories were not strong enough to pull its overall grade up. 

 

Many of The Huffington Post's articles lacked diversity. Though the site covered stories concerning race and gender they, more often than not, did not actually include enough (if any) sources or quote anyone from the races or genders they discussed. This can be seen in the December 1 article: Hacked: Documents Reveal A Hollywood Studio's Stunning Gender and Race Gap. The article discusses Amy Pascal and that Sony has only one woman who earns a salary over $1 million, but the article didn't offer perspectives from these people. The article was very informative about a controversial race and gender issue, but failed to provide quotes from those affected.The article would have been a stronger story (as well as received a stronger grade) if it had included more voices. The only two given is that of its author, Kevin Roose, and an unnamed source. 

 

The Huffington Post interestingly has sub-categories of news such as "Black Voices" and "Gay Voices". This appears to be the Post's attempt at adding diversity to its site though it almost seems counter-productive as grouping minorities together in a separate section of the news carries the consequence of stereotyping. Also, by separating those voices from the front page and other news, it means that in order to get perspectives from "blacks" and "gays" one must actively seek it out. Is the Post justifying omitting these voices in its main articles by providing these sub-categories? Unless you're media smart, these sections could be overlooked completely or disregarded as something not worthy of front-page coverage.

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