<nettime> Adbuster campaign against sale of Huftington post to AOL

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Dear jammers, creatives, revolutionaries,

socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of  
thousands of citizen journalists. She exploited our idealism and let  
us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was different,  
independent and leftist. Now she’s cashed in and three thousand indie  
bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp.

But the Huffington Post is not Arianna’s to sell. It is ours: the  
lefty writers and readers, environmentalism activists and anti- 
corporate organizers who flooded the site with 25 million visits a  
month. So we’re going to take it back.

We’ll stop going to her site. And we’ll stop blogging for her too.  
Then we’ll give birth to an alternative to AOL’s HuffPo by using the  
#huffpuff hash tag to tell the world about our favorite counter- 
culture websites and indie blogs.

We are the ones who built the Huffington Post. And now we will be the  
ones who will huff & puff it down.

UPDATE:


#HUFFPUFF has touched a nerve. Now, a firestorm is developing as  
writers, readers and publishers of indie media are rallying to huff  
and puff Arianna's AOL merger into the ground.

Media activists, this is our chance to strike a blow against the  
corporate media and simultaneously energize the indie blogosphere … a  
step towards a world where the news that animates our political and  
activist lives is not controlled by those who pander to advertisers  
and the bottom line. With continued pressure, we can topple AOL-HuffPo  
and fertilize a healthy media ecology.

So let's keep blowing harder and harder!

	• If you are a writer, take your content off the Huffington Post  
(like Al Giordano of @Narco_News did)
	• If you are a HuffPo reader, unsubscribe/uninstall the app/delete  
your bookmark to the Huffington Post (like@jaberard, @RavenWytch, and  
@drlawler)
	• Everyone, keep telling the world about your favorite alternative  
indie sites using the #huffpuff tag (see the list of alternatives  
nominated thus far below)
There is power in concerted effort, so let's keep huff'n & puff'n and  
huff'n & puff'n until we've blown AOL/HuffPost's house down!

Adbusters

http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/huff-puff-it-down.html








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