A New Yorker journalist is calling around for a story on the "Real Arianna Huffington," the Post reported. The scribe is supposedly asking about the allegedly ballooning value of the Huffington Post, recently pegged at $200 million, and about whether publisher Huffington is a "cutthroat boss." Perhaps the New Yorker writer — former New York Post man Ken Auletta? — should ring up HuffPo senior editor Rachel Sklar, who just last night aired news that Huffington spiked her story about MSNBC because she wants to tightly control how politics is discussed on her site. From Sklar's message on Jim Romenesko's Poynter.org forum:

This post was originally written for "Eat The Press' at the Huffington Post, but it was determined that the post was not "congruent with HuffPost's editorial position against the media's penchant for viewing everything through a left/right prism" (see here). With respect, I disagreed, and together we decided that the piece would be best placed elsewhere. Thanks to Jim for that opportunity.

More suggestions for the New Yorker:

  • Look into why the Huffington Post ignored the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair at first even though it owned the story.
  • Commission more hilarious artwork like the drawing above, used for the New Yorker's last Huffington story.
  • Find more pointless, deeply inaccurate blog posts by Huffington's celebrity friends, like the awful thing John Cusack just posted.
  • Expect Arianna to hold a major grudge. She nursed one against Tim Russert for 14 years for a profile his wife wrote that turned out to be true.
  • Don't try to prove Huffington is a cutthroat boss just because she supposedly "fired assistants after one day of work." We know another internet publisher of Southern European extraction who supposedly fired someone after zero days of work. Now that's cutthroat!

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