Huffpost has Become Tabloid Trash

I love Sam Stein regardless.

Have they started paying their writers yet?

I didn’t comment on this because I have written a HuffPost blog for years and so I am obviously biased in favor of some of the site’s content. But an email I got this morning changed that.

I was given a blog years ago, when blogs were not a free for all and when paid editors fact checked and proofed stories. I am a professional writer with 20 years of experience and specific expertise at a high professional level. I’ve written a lot about a couple of specific issues, and all my stories except first-person personal essays have been research heavy and much longer than advised by HuffPost. The company mandates to its paid staff that stories not be longer than 500 words in all cases, which means that its paid writers really have no opportunity to prpduce investigative content. Likewise, some issue-expert bloggers are dogged about investigation, whereas paid staff are assigned click bait stories by editors and given no opportunity to write meaningful content.

I am well aware of the faults of the blogging process. When HuffPost made blogs so readily available to anyone who wanted to self-promote and hawk a product or service, it undermined its own brand. At the same time, the platform has been an opportunity for some serious investigation and provocative content that really has no parallel in media right now.

This morning, HuffPost sent out an email summarily firing all its bloggers with no notice. As of today, no more content. Not only was no notice given, but the “blog team” essentially blamed writers for its own free-for-all mistake, telling bloggers that they are “too loud” and that they have taken up space that should he given to “more-deserving voices.” This is the equivalent of a firing with a kick in the balls.

This may sound like good news for those who think HuffPost is tabloidy and superficial. It’s the opposite. This means that along with the shitty blog content, HuffPost is sacrificing its most provocative content. From now on, there will be a greater focus on partisan political content and celebrity stories. Anti-Trump sounds good, but it’s really just more of the type of noise that the editors criticized bloggers of making, which will only speak to partisan interests. No more longform reporting; the tabloid style will be consistent now across all new content.

A lot of people who have read my stories have told me they never read HuffPost and always thought it to be a hyper-liberal, Breitbart-type tabloid publication until they discovered my research-intensive analyses and those of other bloggers. I’ve got readers from many countries (some of whom have brought me there to speak), and although I am a professional editor and writer, I accepted the exploitative no-payment term because I regarded this as a volunteer service and an opportunity to gain attention for under-reported important issues with thoughtful nonpartisan commentary. I don’t regret my decision to sacrifice pay, but I do resent the fuck-you after years of contributing to the company’s brand, and I think it is making a mistake in broadly eliminating some of their best and most consistent writers to focus more on celebrity bullshit and bitching about Trump, which ultimately will just be preaching to an increasingly smaller choir.

I stopped even glancing at HuffPo when they changed to Queer instead of Gay. I know a lot of others who did the same. Keep telling yourself that queer is not a slur but you don’t get to label others with your ignorant pandering. HuffPo hasn’t been relevant for a long time anyway. Sorry you got canned r3, and in such a nasty way, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise from a company that dismisses decades of oppression with its casual “you are now queer like it or not”.

It's shite and aggressively low-brow in form, content, everything. It's like being chained in an airport's food court, not even the duty free shop zone.

Instead of insulting and firing all of its bloggers as the US HuffPost did, the UK version has a radical idea of assessing and editing its bloggers’ content.

Even more radically, the UK editor says—hold onto your hat—that not paying writers is unethical and from now on it will commission writing.

With pay. Unheard of!

R4, your fichu is pulled too tight. Loosen it just a wee bit, dear.

I used to got to that site every day to get news.

Now, I never go.

What happened? It changed its format to something shitty and annoying to navigate around. It became very click-baity, with 'You'll Never Guess" headlines. And they changed Gay Voices to Queer Voices. Bye!

What happened? It was sold. New owners. New management.

At one time, the Huffington Post presented online journalism. That’s how it built an audience. Along came BuzzFeed and Arianna Huffington’s departure, and the new owners cut out Huffington’s name and reduced the brand and its content to BuzzFeed-inspired bullshit. Ironically, as HuffPost was giving in to the of-the-moment competition, BuzzFeed was building actual journalistic chops. Journalistic integrity among both is and has been lesser than in established news organizations, and has inspired/forced those organizations to sacrifice their own integrity. All in all, deterioration.

Even Slate/Salon/Daily Beast are more readable.

Always thought Arianna was a phony ...supporting liberal causes and making a mint and not paying her writers.

Sorry to hear about the firing of the bloggers.

I’m with r4.

When they renamed Gay Voices to Queer Voices, they were dead to me

Oh and all those bullshit articles about porn stars and how prostitution is empowering.

Plus they were all in for Bernie

And totally push the T agenda....on likely gay kids....and ignoring male patterned violence against women.

I don’t huff pooo

I'm with R4.

R3 sounds like a chef frustrated that his manager at McDonald's wants him to use the microwave instead of a grill.

Whatever the far crazy right is, HuffPost is the other side of the coin for the far crazy left--just look at their YouTube videos. 27 Questions for White People. 17 Resolutions to Make White Men Better, 22 Ways Gay White Men Appropriate Black Women, 18 Ways Trans POC Femmes Are Better Than You.

The Left has begun to cannibalize itself...

I gave up on Huffpost a couple of years ago.

An insane woman who hated her husband was using their child to get back at him by insisting their child wanted to cut off his penis.

This crazy woman would contribute lengthy, repetitive and nauseatingly sentimental articles for months how she was finding her new life by cutting off her pre-adolescent son's penis.

These nauseatingly sentimental articles went on for months because it seems there's a market for nauseatingly sentimental STUPID articles.

I also gave up on Huff's nauseatingly sentimental commercial product placement, such as his—

People need to get over being “offended” by queer ASAP. You are the only ones and the word is totally accepted by mainstream society and the queer/gay community.

So here’s one of their new, paid stories—journalism to save the world: Confesssions of a Professional Disney Princess.

Sorry R16 but I was called the Q word to many times in school to click on a website that wants me to see it every day. I haven't been back since. There are plenty of other places to get info from.

FWIW, The Advocate also stopped paying non-staff writers by 2009 or 2010, after having stiffed a lot of professional writers for articles they had already published.

Quite the little homophobe aren’t you r16? Gay men who don’t want to be called queer - a slur - are just to shut up and do as they’re told? Fuck off you snivelling little shit.

No, R20, they are to wake up and realize that queer has transformed from a slur to word of empowerment. No straight person thinks queer is a slur anymore. No LGBTQ person I’ve met in real life thinks it’s a slur either. Just the other day I was just saying that Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name have really raised the profile and respect of queer cinema and no one batted an eye- in fact they all agreed with me!

Maybe R18 should have paid a little more attention in school so he could learn it’s “too many times” and not “to many times.” Oh, dear indeed.

My English BA (circa 2000) focused in media and cultural studies, and most of the academic LGBT and women’s studies articles we read used the word “queer.” (This was back before GLBT became LGBT, and before anyone really addressed trans issues at all.) I am not bothered by the word because I feel like 1) people who decided to use it must have gone through the same academic mill and therefore would have been taught it’s a more all-inclusive term, and 2) I am really fed up with the acronyms...I think now we are at LGBTQIIA (?), but one of my coworkers told me she learned in grad school that QUIILTBAG is the most inclusive acronym, and I gave up caring at that point. “Queer” is OK with me because then we don’t have to become divided, ironically, over competition to include everyone (what IS the second I?) or prioritize one over another. (GLBT turning into LGBT...did lesbians really insist on ‘ladies first’? Yes, they did!)

That said, Huffington Post is shit.

That said, there have been amusing and memorable exceptions.

People who use ‘queer’ are stupid

And most of these ‘queers’ are straight so yeah pretty much useless

Huffpo stopped being cool years ago. moving on!

I’ve noticed an almost gleeful response from HuffPost every time there is a new “me too” accusation. I think it’s that new editor that looks like a man, the Lydia woman

I gave up on HuffPoo years ago as well, for the reasons you mentioned OP. Also Ariana Huffington's ex husband is a pedo/hebephile. Watch the documentary an open secret.

Agreed R23. I have met quite a number of people who are completely heterosexual and not gay/lesbian/bisexual or even trans, and they call themselves "queer". Granted these were academics, and clueless millennials so I guess they thought they were being edgy?

Call yourself whatever you like r21 but you don’t get to force your hate speech on me. I am not queer. I don’t accept that anyone has the right to use that slur to describe me. Just because you think it’s OK doesn’t mean everyone else does. And yes, it was being used when I was in college and I refused to be labelled by it then as well.

Rappers use nigger all the time, do you think it’s OK to use that to describe black people? Is that a slur too far?

So true OP HUFFPOST Officially sucks

More important investigative news from HuffPost.

“(You may know me as “Butthoven’ from my viral video where I bounce my butt cheeks to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The response to that video was a surprise. Who knew people liked butts in bowties so much?)

In the business, my tagline is ‘The Most Naked Woman.’ This definitely refers to my state of undress, but it also has a deeper meaning.”

Boring, irrelevant paper. The Washington Post is the best one to me.

I never thought that the Huffington Post was relevant.

look who is running it now.....