Arianna Huffington crowed after the 2008 presidential election that her website is "more participatory" than publications that practice journalism "the old way." But she's a favor-trading traditionalist when it comes to distributing money: Even the best contributing bloggers are unpaid, while paying gigs tend to go to VIPs.

Some have earned their status. Others were born into it.

Which isn't to say the well born are necessarily unqualified for their jobs: HuffPo is notoriously hard to work for, with famously high turnover; couple this with the site's national expansion and it's easy to see why HuffPo is hungry for young talent. But aren't there, like, some laid off journalists out there, with actual experience?

Here are some of the well-connected VIP spawn Arianna's taken on:

Ethan Axelrod

Ethan Axelrod is the son of Barack Obama's longtime adviser David Axelrod. The 22-year-old has written and edited for his student newspaper at Colorado College, according to the Washington Post, and apparently has no other professional journalism experience. He will edit HuffPo's Denver edition.

Mediaite quotes insiders saying he's modest about his killer genes:

"He's a very nice, unassuming guy," one staffer told Mediaite. "He's smart, obviously – he comes from good stock."

Funny that the Post's Howard Kurtz didn't mention his newspaper's own family connection to the HuffPo (see next).

(Photo via Axelrod's Facebook profile)

Nicholas Graham

Nicholas Graham is part of the same Graham family that owns the Washington Post. Formerly an Associate News Editor at HuffPo, Graham appears to have recently become Associate Video Editor. One insider tells us his predecessor, Patrick Waldo, was well liked inside of the company but was recently pushed out. (Pic via NCAA YouTube)

Elyssa Spitzer

It's hard to begrudge Elyssa Spitzer her HuffPo internship for at least two reasons. One, as the daughter of disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, she's been through a lot of family trauma in the past year and a half. Two, we're not even sure if her internship is paid. (Pic via Cityfile)

Liz Hanks

In 2007 and 2008, Liz Hanks worked as Associate Living Editor at HuffPo. We've heard actor Tom Hanks' daughter had two other jobs, as a news and blog editor, and that Arianna Huffington eagerly publicized her name and presence after she joined the staff (to a degree some on staff found unseemly).

We imagine working in the living section was scary: It was home to a wide array of true believers from Arianna Huffington's culty religious group, the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness. Hanks' supervisor, Anya Strzemien, was, according to insiders, forced by Huffington to attend a seminar run by a group closely tied to MSIA.Despite the hubub around her, Hanks seems to have been generally well regarded within HuffPo for keeping a level head.

Matthew Palevsky

Matthew Palevsky is Arianna Huffington's godson. His father Max was a billionaire computer entrepreneur. Palevsky was in January appointed to oversee HuffPo's OffTheBus citizen journalism initiative. He hardly seemed qualified:

The effort was a crown jewel, breaking two major scoops during the 2008 presidential campaign. It was previously headed by big guns: a Howard Dean and John Kerry organizer who formed a Web volunteering institute at Harvard Law, and a Nation editor and longtime magazine writer who teaches journalism at USC. They were of no relation to Huffington; one was later hired by Pro Publica.

Katherine Zaleski

Katherine Zaleski's father is said to be close friends with Ken Lerer, Huffington Post's co-founder. Further, we're told she has her own apartment in the El Dorado luxury co-op at 300 Central Park West; her dad is said to live in a separate penthouse of his own and Lerer a few floors down.

For four years, Zaleski controlled the coveted front page of the Huffington Post — as much as anyone besides Arianna does — but later moved into a special projects role. She took over the New York section after Dan Collins abruptly quit (Huffington later claimed he was always supposed to leave the job just after launch, but that's not what she told us just before launch).

He's her uncle. Or so we're told.

Last week, Cityfile noticed a Blockshopper report that Lerer had gone in with Bartolomeo on $1,025,000 apartment in Carnegie Hill. They thought that was pretty weird—Huffington Post doesn't pay its own writers, but its co-founder buys real estate for People writers? The mystery deepened when Cityfile started digging, and found that Lerer helped Joey's sister Stephanie buy a $1.25 million apartment on the Upper West Side in March. What is it with Lerer and the Bartolomeo girls, Cityfile wondered. (Well, the Stephanie Bartolomeo connection makes some sense—she works in ad sales at Huffington Post and worked with Lerer when he was at AOL. But still.)

Do the Bartolomeo girls possess some horribly embarrassing secret that they've been using to blackmail Lerer? Is Lerer carrying on a tawdry affair with both sisters at the same time?

Things only got stranger when Cityfile put in calls to get an answer—first Joey stonewalled, then Lerer stonewalled, then a Huffington Post flack stonewalled. No one would answer the simple question: Why is Ken Lerer buying apartments for Joey and Stephanie Bartolomeo?

Anyway, the answer is: Because he's their uncle. Or so a source who knows them told us. Either their stepfather's brother or their mother's brother; our source isn't quite sure. So there's that. Mystery solved. We could use an uncle like that.

The only remaining mystery, of course, is why Bartolomeo and Lerer would insist on being so cagey about a mundane real estate transaction.

We e-mailed Joey to confirm, but haven't heard back yet.

UPDATE: "Yes, he's our uncle and he's the best uncle in the galaxy," writes Bartolomeo. We concur.

Portfolio media blogger Jeff Bercovici says:

In making his pitch, Kearney clearly violated section 3.iv of Huffpo's user agreement, which forbids bloggers to "post advertisements or solicitation of business." (While bloggers often use Huffpo to promote their books or personal blogs, there's usually at least some pretense that they're writing about a larger topic.)

But maybe Thrillist is a special case, since its co-founder, Ben Lerer, is the son of Huffpo chairman Ken Lerer? I emailed Huffpo editor Roy Sekoff and its head of PR to ask about this but have yet to receive an explanation.

It's not the first time Huffpo has served as a promotional platform for Thrillist. Back in June, Huffpo's Living section editor, Verena von Pfetten, blogged about going on an all-expenses-paid junket to Las Vegas courtesy of Thrillist and JetBlue. Her post failed to mention the Lerer family connection. Rachel Sklar, who covers media for Huffpo, also accepted the junket and wrote it up for Radar. And Thrillist and Huffpo are close in another sense as well: They share office space in Soho.

• Yahoo News and Huffington Post have had a syndication deal since launch; buying HuffPo, as it's affectionately known, would boost Yahoo's blogger cred.
• AOL may be looking to augment its Weblogs Inc. stable with some good political commentary. HuffPo cofounder Ken Lerer was a bigwig at AOL back in the day — though that may not help him much with Time Warner's current leadership
• HuffPo's pseudo-namesake, the Washington Post, already has a syndication deal with them and a number of WaPo columnists blog for Huffington. The New York Times — heck, aren't they just a fancy blog already?

Really, any media company would be interested in the company that Lerer and Huffington have built — as a cheap add-on, mind you, not at a frothy IPO price. But why sell?

Even if HuffPo had any shot at an IPO — and, as Schonfeld's readers have hastened to tell him on TechCrunch's comments, it doesn't — it's not like its founders need the money. Huffington is a successful writer and got a fat divorce settlement. Lerer was a top executive at AOL and Time Warner and started his own PR firm in New York. This is their pet project and I can't see them selling anytime soon. Huffington — like Michael Moore — has world-changing aspirations. With plenty of money in her pocketbook, she doesn't have to worry about cashing out.

(Disclosure: I consulted for Huffington Post briefly in 2005.) (Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)