HuffPo leaves a greasy mark on my mind

I have a secret. I scan the Huffington Post headlines almost every day lately. The format draws me in. I'm not immune to the sensationalism of many of their articles and their easy and constantly updated mix of entertainment, politics, and world news. As with any successful media outlet (and maybe HuffPo should be called a clearinghouse), it's been interesting watch the format, tone, and choices change as it grows.

I can't comment on the blog posts that occur there, as I very rarely read them. There's just not that much I find of interest. It's a rare opinion expressed in a post that hasn't already been worked over a thousand different ways by other bloggers or reporters, at least one of which has made it through the noise filter and risen to the top to take the majority of public attention. I'm not going to read two posts by non-luminaries that both cover the general topic, of "boy, our economy really sucks, doesn't it?"

What I do use HuffPo for, is as a quick scan of the headlines for topics that interest me. Now I won't go all elitist on you and tell you what they are. But I can tell you what they're not. To take this evening's headlines: anything about "Octo-Mom" is out. "Montant governer polks fun at Palin" is no good. I could make a long list. And that's the problem. HuffPo is drowning in sensationalism, scraping any story it can find to drive agenda, and is increasingly reminding me a of a poor imitation of a combination of USA Today and People magazine.

I'm sure there are great excuses. I can hear them. "We give people what they want . . .times are tough, and we can't always focus on the in-depth stuff . . . our goal is to provide as much as we can to our broad spectrum of liberal readers, and we don't expect to please everyone" And more privately "we have bills to pay, and we mean to pay them, if that means we become a version of National Enquirer, then so be it, we'll cry into our vintage wine a little."

And then there's the small stuff. They reuse the same images for different stories. That's bad cost cutting. They have a terrible yellow glow that happens when a new headline appears. They make curious editorial choices about what news items to leave up. Now that i write that, I'm thinking it has to be driven by the number of past readers. Or an expected connection with an upcoming news story or cycle or slant. I hope that's the reason, and that it's not just an editor or five deciding on instinct and "experience" what should stay up.

Ehh, they're an easy target. I just get excited when some new slant on a media model seems to be working. But like so many that grow fast in a very hard market, what looks so promising when it's young doesn't always transition well into adulthood.