2013 Can't End Soon Enough for AOL: Editor-in-Chief Said Soon to Be Out the Door

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Seven months after AOL haled her arrival, Editor-in-Chief Cyndi Stivers is on her way out, according to an article in the New York Post.

No official word from AOL, according to the Post, about Stivers, who left a position as editor of the Columbia Journalism Review to join AOL (see "TUOL" post 5/13/13). Her departure would  be a blow to AOL, which this year eliminated 40 percent of its hyperlocal news AOL Patch editorial staff (see "TUOL" post 8/19/13) and reduced the number of Patch sites from 900 to 14, the Post reported.

AOL Online Media Properties Still Hemorrhaging Money

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America Online-owned The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Patch continued to drag down AOL's financial performance during Q1, according to reports by TheStreet.com and CNBC.com.

Despite overall revenue growth of 2 percent, sales plunged 9 percent at AOL's dial-up online subscription division. The HuffPo/Patch/TechCrunch division was bathed in red ink to the tune of $4.9 million based on First Quarter results.

The media giant's CEO Tim Armstrong maintains a positive attitude toward his acquisitions of the three entities, but on Wall St., AOL stands for Armstrong's Operating Losers.

Like Mothra, Huffington Post Swoops into Tokyo; Launches Japanese Edition

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Partnering with Asahi Shimbun, Japan's second largest newspaper with more than seven million daily readers, AOL-owned news aggregator The Huffington Post this week launched a Japanese edition.

According to a post by the independent media publishing company journalism.co.uk, HuffPo also last week announced plans to debut an edition in Germany in a joint effort with Tomorrow Focus AG. HuffPo debuted its U.K. version in July 2011 (see "TUOL" post 6/22/11), the same year Canada's HuffPO went online (see "TUOL" post 5/26/11). Other European editions are online in France in collaboration with Le Monde (see "TUOL" post 1/23/12); Italy, in partnership with GruppoExpresso; and Spain in partnership with El Pais.

Shigeki Matsuura will be at the helm of Huffington Post Japan. The editor-in-chief previously helped to launch the online edition of Wired in Japan and political blogging site BLOGOS. Asahi Shimbun's digital division director hopes HuffPo will draw a younger demographic than the print edition, and aspires to reach 50 million monthly visitors, according to the journalism.co.uk post.

As HuffPo's plan for world domination moves apace, soon online visitors on every continent will be able to glimpse side boob photos of Miley Cyrus.

Bloomberg News Plays Matchmaker; Wonders if CBS & Time Warner Will Hook-Up

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It's spring and romance is in the air, which has Bloomberg News all atwitter in an article contemplating a union between thriving media giants Time Warner and CBS.

Time Warner may still be on the rebound from its painful 2009 break-up with AOL, with which it exchanged vows in 2001 to the tune of $124 billion. Both Time Warner and CBS already have dipped their toes in relationship waters as partners in the CW Network.

Bloomberg News reported that both merger candidates are attractive New Yorkers, with CBS presently the broadcast television ratings champ and Time Warner, owner of cable outlets CNN and TNT along with one of Hollywood's busiest movie studios. Whether the match made in broadcast heaven occurs depends largely on the whims of 89-year-old mogul Sumner Redstone, who holds more than three-quarters of CBS's voting rights.

The Bloomberg article speculates that CBS could come with a $35 billion price tag, not including the cost of catering,a band and the honeymoon. Neither of the would-be lovebirds commented for the story.

UPDATE: 2nd Circ. to HuffPo Freelancers: Joy of Writing Your Just (& Only) Reward

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The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit yesterday in Tasini, et al. v. AOL, Inc. et al (Case No. 12-cv-1428) upheld a trial court ruling in March that dismissed a putative class action brought by unpaid contributors to The Huffington Post seeking a share of the bounty received by the news aggregating site when it was purchased by AOL in 2011 (see "TUOL" post 2/7/11).

The appellate court affirmed the trial judge allowance of the motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim [Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6)] brought by defendants AOL, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and The Huffington Post against plaintiffs Jonathan Tasini, Molly Secours, Billy Altman, Richard Laermer and Tara Tublin. The plaintiffs, whose blog posts appeared in HuffPo, sought on behalf of themselves and other uncompensated HuffPo writers, a $105 million slice of the $315 million AOL purchase price.

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge John Koetl in a March 30, 2012, decision rejected the plaintiffs claims that the defendants were unjustly enriched by publishing the plaintiffs' work gratis, and acted deceptively, allegedly in violation of N.Y. General Business Law section 349 (see "TUOL" post 4/2/12), holding that the writers were not entitled to payment after the fact and could simply write elsewhere if they didn't like HuffPo.

According to accounts by Reuters and the THR, Esq. blog, the Second Circuit opinion noted that the plaintiffs knew from the get-go that HuffPo was a for-profit enterprise that could someday be attractive to a buyer as it gained traction among news sites and generated a significant advertising revenue stream. More to the point, the court opinion stated: "[A]t all times prior to the merger when they submitted their work to The Huffington Post, plaintiffs understood that they would receive compensation only in the form of exposure and promotion."

The unpaid bloggers are going to have to be content with the sheer joy of  just being published and perhaps, as insiders, the chance to see "side-boob" photos of celebrities before they are posted on the HuffPo site.

Virtual Lobbying

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The nation's capital isn't wanting for lobbyists, but add the Washington, D.C.-based The Internet Association to the list of lobbying groups looking to influence Congress on issues ranging from online security to privacy.

Bloomberg News this week reported that Michael Beckerman will serve as the IA's CEO and president. Group members include Google, Facebook, AOL, Zynga, EBay, Expedia, Monster, LinkedIn and Trip Advisor.  Economic growth in the ether will be one of the organization's principal goals.

No Rule-Changing Mid-game: Judge Says Unpaid HuffPo Writers Will Stay That Way

Jonathan Tasini . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge John Koeltl ruled last Friday  in Jonathan Tasini v. America Online, Inc. (Case No. 1:11-cv-02472-JGK) that just because The Huffington Post hit the mother lode when Internet Service Provider AOL acquired the news aggregator for $315 million (see "TUOL" post 2/7/11), uncompensated HuffPo writers were not entitled to payment after the fact.

Authors Molly Secours and Jonathan Tasini were among writers whose work appeared on the Web site of The Huffington Post, which was founded in 2005. As reported by the New York Law Journal and The Wall St. Journal Law Blog, the plaintiffs sued for upward of $105 million, alleging they were deceived by Arianna Huffington into writing for the site gratis in exchange for the exposure that appearing on the popular site purportedly would generate.

In granting the defendant's motion to dismiss, Judge Koeltl said the plaintiffs, many of whom are professional journalists, knew they weren't getting paid for having their work published on the HuffPo site.  "No one forced the plaintiffs to give their work to The Huffington Post for publication," Judge Koeltl wrote, "and the plaintiffs candidly admit that they did not expect compensation. The principles of equity and good conscience do not justify giving the plaintiffs a piece of the purchase price when they never expected to be paid; repeatedly agreed to the same bargain and went into the arrangement with eyes wide open."

The plaintiffs advanced both an implied-in-law contract argument to prevent unjust enrichment to AOL, and alleged the defendant's purported deceptive conduct violated New York General Business Law sec. 349.  The case brought by the unpaid contributors was dismissed with prejudice by the Court.

'Huffington.' Digital Magazine on the Horizon

Fragment Arianne Huffington, Huffington Post Creative Commons licentie BBC / The Virtual Revolution (Photo credit: wilbertbaan)

"Huffington.," a digital magazine specifically designed as an app for iPad and its ilk, is the latest brainstorm produced by the AOL-owned Huffington Post Media Group, Forbes Magazine reports.

Former New York Times journalist turned Huffington Post Executive Editor Tim O'Brien will oversee the project, according to the Forbes article. The period is part of the "Huffington." periodical's title. Vanity Fair was already taken, though there's no lack of vanity involved in the digital moniker.

Social Media Giants Try to Stop STOP

Image by The U.S. National Archives via FlickrThe Stop Online Piracy Act ("STOP")[H.R.3261], which aims to allow intellectual property holders to ward off infringing foreign Websites, has drawn spirited opposition from a Who's Who of social media behemoths, including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo, AOL, eBay and Zynga, according to Findlaw's Technologist blog.

The social media moguls fear STOP will curtail job-creation and promote censorship. The measure would, among other things, empower the Attorney General to obtain court orders requiring ISPs to block access to offending Websites, prevent ISPs, advertisers and credit card companies from servicing infringing Websites if requested by a rights holder, and remove the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) that shield ISPs acting in good faith.

Facebook, Google et al. want continued protection under the DMCA, which they consider the "cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry's growth and success." Proponents of STOP argue the bill would facilitate the purchase of content and goods from legitimate Websites by users because it would block counterfeit sites.

Mediate: Huff Post Will Handle All Aol Original News Content

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeA little more than two months after America Online and Huffington Post announced their merger (see "TUOL" post 2/7/11), Mediaite.com is reporting that Aol News will forego producing original content, leaving that task to Huff Post staffers.

Aol has yet to respond to the Mediaite post. Mediaite reported that included among the jobs pared by Aol last month (see "TUOL" post 3/10/11) were a previously undisclosed 120 editorial staffers. If Mediaite's story is borne out, it remains to be seen whether the "Aol News" brand, such as it is, will continue to have an online presence, even if it is being overseen and created by Huffington Posters.

AOL: You've Got Layoffs!

Image by Frank Gruber via FlickrAOL, fresh off its acquisition of The Huffington Post [see "TUOL" post 2/7/11], has slashed 900 jobs, according to the Paidcontent.org and All Things Digital Web sites.

The breakdown involves pink slips being issued to 200 U.S. employees and 400 workers in India, and outsourcing another 300 jobs in India. Among those departing are Jonathan Dube, senior veep of news. Editorial and other media product groups are taking a hit, but advertising staffers were spared in this round, so that they can devote themselves to drumming up ads for The Huffington Post, no doubt.

Since Tim Armstronng became CEO of America Online, 90 percent of the Internet Service Provider's leadership team has turned over.  Now we understand what the AOL "running man" logo is running from.

Gannett Pares Collective News Staff of 3 NJ Dailies by Half

Image via WikipediaRoughly half of the combined 100 newsroom staffers at three of  Gannett Co.'s New Jersey dailies--Courier News, Daily Record and Home News Tribune--are getting pink-slipped, according to a memo leaked to the Gannett Blog and reported by AOL's Chatham Patch.

Declining circulation and shrinking advertising are fueling the layoffs and restructuring at the dailies, which last underwent layoffs and a major shake-up in 2009 that included moving all copy editing and design functions to the Neptune, N.J.-based Asbury Park Press. The Parsippany-based Daily Record serves Morris County; the Courier News readership is in Somerset County; and the Home News Tribune covers Middlesex County.

By total circulation, Gannett is the nation's largest newspaper publisher. This grim news hits hard because the dedicated staff of "TUOL" is fronted by a New Jersey native,  so it will take a while to fuhgeddabowdit.

AOL Tries to Make Patch Work

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Jumping into the hyperlocal news market with both feer, AOL, Inc. is now operating 99 Patch sites in nine states, according to a story in today's Boston Globe.

According to The Nielsen Co., as of June 2010, when AOL had 85 Patch sites up and running, AOL averaged 210,000 unique visitors to the sites nationwide.  The Globe is taking a keen interest in Patch because it has touched down in Massachusetts where the Globe's online site, www.Boston.com, already operates its own hyperlocal Your Town news sites, and GateHouse Media, Inc. also competes with its Wicked Local sites in Bay State communities.

The Globe article claims that its Your Town sites averaged 200,000 visitors to its 25 outlets in June, compared to Wicked Local's 529,000 visitors spread out among its 160 sites. AOL, which purportedly is doling out $50 million to expand its Patch network this year, expects to build on its 13 Mass. sites before the end of the year.