In an IM earlier this morning, I told my friend Curt that I would be heading into the Chautauqua lecture by Arianna Huffington. He said, “Heh… make sure you slap her for me.”
I admit. I had the same thought. I’ve always sort of ascribed Huffington with the Ivanna Trump vibe — funky accent, firey speech, not a lot there. Now that I’ve seen her up close, I know that two out of those three are correct. I’m just not sure which two.
Obviously, she was here to contribute to the discussion on media, new media, ethics in media, and media bashing. To be sure, there’s been a boatload of each. But while the other folks in the discussion were from inside the fold, working in traditional media newsrooms and desperately trying to wrap their arms around this non-traditional whatnot, Huffington is coming at it from a different angle. She founded HuffingtonPost.com in 2005 and while she contends hers is one of the highest trafficked sites on the net, she doens’t hold much of a candle to the other representatives who’ve shared the stage with her so far this week. Click on the graph below to see Alexa.com’s rankings comparing her site to ABCNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, and nytimes.com (she’s at the bottom).