Rachel Sklar Leaving Huffington Post
To hear present and former Huffington Post employees tell it, the liberal website owes its ridiculously high turnover mainly to founder Arianna Huffington's tendency to use staffers to perform menial personal chores, to an internal culture of nasty screaming and name-calling and to a generally chaotic management structure, such as it is, subservient to Arianna's rapidly-changing whims. But Rachel Sklar managed to last a jaw-dropping two-and-a-half years at HuffPo, a rare achievement that saw her become one of the site's highest-profile editors and a frequent cable-TV talking head. Why would management, as our tipster claims, push Sklar out? Read between the lines in the memo after the jump.
In my HuffPo reporting last week, some insiders said they noticed Sklar appeared to have been pulled back from her television appearances in recent months — perhaps, one speculated, to keep the spotlight on Arianna and clear more space for other top brass. Or perhaps a well-publicized disagreement about editorial voice took its toll. Or maybe Sklar, like so many before her, finally decided enough was enough.
In any case, Sklar's forthcoming departure is well-timed in at least one regard: If anyone can help her reignite her media buzz elsewhere, it's Sklar's recent boyfriend, Rex Sorgatz — the microcelebrity expert.