Why a Huffington Post Co-Founder Buys Extravagant Real Estate For Pretty Young Ladies

Cityfile encountered a stubborn mystery this week: Why did Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer help People magazine reporter Joey Bartolomeo buy a $1 million Upper East Side apartment? Bartolomeo and Lerer were mum, but we've found a (mundane!) answer. More »

Huffington Post flogs its chairman's son's site

The Huffington Post has a guy who emails me if I typo their URL in a Valleywag entry. So I doubt it's a lack of managerial attention that allowed a brazen advertorial for Thrillist's new Miami edition to run on the HuffPo Tuesday. I wouldn't have noticed if Portfolio hadn't called it out as a violation of the site's own user agreement. But read Portfolio's summary of the situation and ask yourself how many outraged HuffPo editorials would appear if anyone remotely related to Sarah Palin were to get this kind of play on Little Green Footballs: More »

DailyCandy backer overheard in sale talks with Yahoo

Will one-time AOL exec Bob Pittman sell email newsletter DailyCandy to Yahoo? That's what DailyCandy execs are said to have discussed over dinner last week at the Village Restaurant in New York. Ben Lerer, publisher of Thrillist, another online publication backed by Pittman, told us he's heard no talk of a sale. But, tellingly, he was very curious to know what we've heard. That's because while Yahoo might be a surprise suitor, Pittman's desire to sell DailyCandy is no secret. In 2006, the WSJ reported Pittman had put DailyCandy on the block, hoping to sell his $3.5 million investment for more than $100 million. If the dinner happened, it's surprising Pittman didn't clue Lerer in. Ben's dad Ken, a cofounder of the Huffington Post, was a close ally of Pittman at AOL.

Don't have a cow if you can get the milk for free

Fishbowl watch: Simon Dumenco at AdAge slams Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post a second time for not paying their bloggers. But for most of Huffington Post's celebrity contributors, a blogger's paycheck wouldn't be worth the time it would take to cash it. HuffPo seems to be doing all right, which means the real compensation for a post there is the kind of in-crowd recognition that can't be bought.

Tech blogger on HuffPo: "Can you say IPO?" Answer: "No."

The new editor at TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld, has gotten a little IPO-crazy in these heady days of Bubble 2.0. The best guess we've seen on a Huffington Post valuation is $60 million which, for a media company, is a drop in the bucket. We can't remember a tech or media company going public with a valuation anything like that. Huffington Post is the most unlikely IPO candidate since Wired in 1996 — and Wired had substantially more revenues and a real magazine business. Maybe we were onto something with the whole cheese thing. More likely? An acquisition. More »

The Huffington Post has named former CBSNews.com chief Betsy Morgan the political blog's new CEO, replacing cofounder Ken Lerer. One hopes that, unlike the site's columnists, she'll actually get paid. [Silicon Alley Insider]