Progressive Intrigue

Arianna kills The New Yorker

I am just plain fascinated by the story that’s detailed now on Vanity Fare about the lawsuit against Ariana Huffington brought  by Peter Daou and James Boyce.   I remember when Ariana came to one of the early FDL book salons in search of progressive credentials. She even friended me on Face book at the time.  She was–at best–a C lister then and I don’t even think I rate a letter even now.  Peter Daou, of course, is familiar to any of us that were remotely connected to the Hillary Blogosphere or campaign back in the day.  Peter is just one huckava nice guy among all of his other attributes.  There evidently was some meeting in 2004 that all attended where Ariana supposedly walked away with the idea for HuffPo–an extremely valuable piece of blogosphere web estate–leaving the others out in the cold.  Six years later, there’s a law suit.  The entire thing seems made for a movie of the week and it’s drawing some flak for getting inspiration from the Facebook movie.

That meeting had a lot of witnesses …err.. attendees. Some of them are the A listers of progressive causes.   The idea was to come up with a Democratic version of the Drudge report. Celebs reported to be at the table include David Geffen, Larry David, and Norman Lear.  Oh, the casting possibilities just fill the mind!  It is reminiscent of the founding of Facebook and parallels to the story and movie fill the Vanity Fare missive.  Both of the plaintiffs on the suit have blogged for HuffPo at one time or another which also makes the situation quite tangled up and blue.

Wired–as with the weirdness surrounding the Wikileaks–figures prominently in the tale also. Dauo evidently reached the Rubicon when Andrew Breithbart claimed the HuffPo nativity scene as his own.  Huffington said since Breithbart had not attended the 2004 discussion, he had nothing to do with the inception of HuffPo.  During the discussion, she did not mention Daou or  Boyce.  She mentioned Larry David and wife.  She talked about Andrew Sorkin.  Meg Ryan even made a cameo appearance in the narrative.  Lots of A Listers got their plug plugged.   No Boyce.  No Daou.

Daou and Boyce say that they were the ones who conceived of “a Democratic equivalent of the Drudge Report”—a shorthand description of what the Huffington Post is all about—and called it http://www.fourteensixty.com (for the number of days between presidential elections). According to their 15-page November 14, 2004, memorandum about “1460,” which Boyce gave Huffington before the December 3 meeting, the core objective of the Web site was to “use the potential of the Internet to the fullest extent possible to continue the momentum started during the [2004 presidential] campaign and re-organize the Democratic Party from the outside in, not the inside out.” Daou and Boyce say that they presented their general thoughts about 1460 at the December 3 meeting. (Full disclosure: Boyce has worked as a consultant for Vanity Fair.)

So, Huffington is now an alternative media doyenne who makes appearances on all the right Main Stream News Channels, talk shows, and panels. (I dare you to get her to friend you now!!)  Also, there’s the little matter of how much HuffPo is worth.  Asset pricing a website is always tricky business but given their traffic ratings, it’s probably worth more than The New York Times right now and probably The Washington Post.  Plus, it doesn’t come with all that old timey print baggage like presses, labor unions, and delivery trucks.   Well, to be more specific see The Vanity Fare article estimate.  Yup, I can hear your whistle right over the cable modem.

The Huffington Post has 26 million unique visitors a month, according to the research firm ComScore, and is one of the top 10 current-events and global-news sites in the United States. In October 2008—not exactly a robust time for the market—The New York Times reported estimates that valued the Huffington Post at $200 million. (These days, the unconfirmed value is closer to $350 million, based on expected 2011 revenue of $60 million.)

Peter Daou’s interview is interesting, to say the least.  He was the first to think that maybe he’d been taken advantage of and left in the dirt.  He contacted Boyce who joined because the experience evidently still left a bad taste in his mouth too.  I mean, Meg Ryan gets credit for a business deal and media empire?  Who wouldn’t be appalled?

Daou says he had stewed for some time about not being credited for his role in the Huffington Post’s creation, and then “I was reading about Breitbart. And I hit that part and I said, ‘You know, damn, this is the last straw.’ [Huffington and Lerer] had claimed credit before and every time it just burned. It was like ‘Really? Are you completely erasing us from so essential a part as to how this whole thing came about?’”

He thought about picking up the phone and calling Huffington or e-mailing her to suggest that they just sit down and talk rationally about what had happened once and for all. “We’ve been friends all this time,” he continues. “Essentially the Huffington Post is our family I mean, these were my people. This was my community. This was a Democratic-activist community. It’s a very small, tight-knit community. I love all those people. They worked their asses off to make this site successful. So, it’s like sometimes you have beef with family, sometimes you have beef with a friend. And this was one of those situations.”

Daou spoke with a few lawyers. “They all said the same thing: ‘You have a legal claim if you want to assert it,’” he says.

You can continue reading  William D. Cohan’s attempt to weave the narrative in with the Facebook story at this link. It’s difficult to wish a woman–even Ariana–that’s pulled herself through so many things to a position of power ill will.  Then again, it’s difficult to understand why she wouldn’t have brought more people along with her while climbing that ladder to potential Oprah status.  Oprah has spun off a lot of Oprah subsidiaries that have enriched the people she’s used for various things along the way.  Ariana, on the other hand, has tended to keep the glory to herself.  That, in itself almost plays into the worst of the female power stereotypes–the Queen Bee–which makes me compelled to both defend and offend her.  But, I mean really, on her worst day is she ever as bad as Donald Trump?  However, it also makes me contrast her to Oprah who seems to lead a short line of women in private life that actually lead like you would think a woman should lead and enrich herself royally in the process.

So, this is not the point of the Vanity Fare article, but the point of my post here.  I hate to see it come down to painting Ariana with that nasty brush society can use on women.  On the other hand, would it have hurt her to hold out those perfectly manicured hands of hers and pull some good people–like Peter Daou–with her? This would be especially true if he did help her with the concept.  Did she do them wrong?

I guess we’ll have to watch the entire thing unfold unless there’s a double secret pinkie swear settlement. I haven’t really heard any of the A List Progressives filling up blogs or rags with their stories of the big meeting.  If any one’s taking sides, I haven’t seen it.  I do think it will be added to the long list of cautionary tales of powerful women.  I’m just not sure exactly how the narrative will be written at this point.

I suppose, again, we shall eventually read the rest of the story. Either way, it will be an interesting read and probably a great Lifetime Movie.