Media

HuffPost apologizes for over-aggregating

What the Huffington Post does with many stories it picks up from others (including LA Observed) is have a junior writer rewrite them without adding new facts or smart observation, then not hint until the end that the story actually came from somewhere else. The link is usually given there at the bottom, but the whole game is to satisfy the reader enough that they don't click the link and leave HuffPost — but instead stay to inflate the home team's stats. Ad Age's Simon Dumenco called out Huffington for the practice, with stats showing how few click throughs actually result for the originators of stories. Today, a top editor apologizes and says that the HuffPost writer on the specific piece Dumenco flagged has been suspended.


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