Mediagazer: The Daily vs. Flipboard: One of These is The Future of Newspapers... (Richard MacManus/ReadWriteWeb)

2:30 PM ET, February 7, 2011

Top News:

Betting on News, AOL Is Buying The Huffington Post — The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

You've Got Arianna: AOL Buys Huffington Post for $315 Million in Cash and Stock, Appoints Huffington Editor in Chief — In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web's most prominent news and opinion sites.

Arianna Huffington / The Huffington Post:

When HuffPost Met AOL: ‘A Merger of Visions’ — I've used this space to make all sorts of important HuffPost announcements: new sections, new additions to the HuffPost team, new HuffPost features and new apps. But none of them can hold a candle to what we are announcing today.

Dan Lyons / The Daily Beast:

Huffington Post and AOL: You've Got a Mess — AOL's pseudo journalism, Huffington Post's miniscule ad rates, and editors with big egos and a tough boss will doom the just-created media company. Dan Lyons on the disastrous deal. — It is no surprise that AOL is buying Huffington Post.

Discussion: Felix Salmon, Poynter, SAI and Ben Smith's Blog

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Exclusive Video: AOL's Tim Armstrong and HuffPo's Arianna Huffington Talk About Their Acquisition Touchdown From the Super Bowl — Here's an exclusive video interview BoomTown did with Huffington Post co-founder and Editor in Chief Arianna Huffington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong this morning …

Discussion: Gawker, Venture Capital Dispatch, Guardian, SAI, Screenwerk and TUAW

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

AOL + Huffington Post Won't Go to 11. But It Does Make Sense. — There are lots of Web M&As that don't make much sense. But after you get past the “OMG!!!!!” novelty of AOL's $315 million Huffington Post buy, this one has a straightforward logic to it: Old, big, slow company buys new …

Discussion: @stevecase, Guardian, TechCrunch, BlogPost, @espiers, The Now/ledge, GigaOM, USA Today and @latimesrainey

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Arianna Huffington on Her New AOL Job: “I Want to Stay Here Forever” — Tim Armstrong and company spent yesterday explaining their $315 million Huffington Post purchase to the press. Now they're doing the same for Wall Street, via a conference call. — AOL CFO Artie Minson prepped investors …

Discussion: On Media's Blog, SAI and BoomTown

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Armstrong's Internal Memo To AOLers About The HuffPo Deal — At midnight, AOL announced that it will buy the Huffington Post for $315 million. Below is the internal memo AOL CEO Tim Armstrong sent to all AOL employees (except us, they don't trust us with anything) about the transaction.

Discussion: The Wire, Lost Remote, Newsbook, Media News International, VoIP Watch, Fortune, @arrington, Publishing Executive News, @rabois, The Huffington Post and AOL News, more at Techmeme »

Ken Auletta / News Desk:

Tim Armstrong's Hail Mary Pass — AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post is the equivalent of a fourth-quarter Hail Mary pass. The game clock was ticking down on C.E.O. Tim Armstrong's pledge to demonstrate by the second half of this year that AOL could mount a comeback from the near dead.

Discussion: Guardian, Adweek, CNET News and SAI

Paul Carr / TechCrunch:
I, For One, Welcome Our New Huffington Overlord

Discussion: The Wire, @arrington, @rabois, Faster Future, AdExchanger.com, Reuters and The Huffington Post

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
The Note Arianna Huffington Sent to Her Bloggers About the AOL Acquisition

Discussion: The Wire, Poynter, PC World, tag me with a spoon and Soup

Felix Salmon:

How to filter out fake news — Nick Denton uses Facebook as his news delivery mechanism of choice: … I find this fascinating, and surprising. I share news items on Twitter, but not on Facebook, and very few of my Facebook friends seem remotely inclined to post news links …

Remy Stern / Gawker:
Welcome to the New Gawker — Gawker has a brand new look as of today.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, The Wire, WebNewser, New York Observer, Fimoculous, Mediaite, Black Web 2.0, @owenthomas and @iwantmedia

John Hudson / The Atlantic Wire:
Nick Denton: What I Read

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The Editorialiste and @mathewi

Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:

The Daily vs. Flipboard: One of These is The Future of Newspapers... Last week Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper The Daily was launched. The Daily is a newspaper app available to U.S. users on the iPad for 99c per week (the first 2 weeks are free; non-U.S. people can download it for trial via this method).

Discussion: Top Digital Journal News and Future of Journalism

John Gapper / John Gapper's blog:
The Daily lacks news stories, not multimedia

Discussion: Crikey, everythingiCafe and Sample the Web

The Daily:
We're Listening

Discussion: Poynter, rbr.com, Podcasting News, NetNewsCheck Latest, Electronista, paidContent, eMedia Vitals, Future of Journalism, everythingiCafe, Journalism.co.uk, @sdkstl, TUAW, I4U News, The Huffington Post and MediaMemo

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Al Jazeera Hopes Reports From Egypt Open Doors in U.S. — DOHA, Qatar — “Our bureau in Cairo has been attacked.” — Phone calls and e-mail on Friday spread that short message through the Doha headquarters of Al Jazeera, the satellite news network. It was an ominous start to the day …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, TVNewser, Yahoo! News, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Guardian, Wall Street Journal and Inside Cable News

Aljazeera: The media battle for Egypt

Ayman Mohyeldin / @aymanm:
Safe & sound after being detained by the military Thanks 2 all for love/support Hope they Release all! Back 2 work Love Ayman #tahrir #jan25

Discussion: Aljazeera and Babylon & Beyond

Jose Zamora / KnightBlog:

Knight and Mozilla Foundations launch partnership to advance media innovation — Technology changes fast. Technology companies are built to handle continuous change. News organizations, even new ones, often are not. These facts are a challenge, but also a great opportunity to promote quality journalism and media innovation.

Discussion: Phillip Smith, Knight Foundation News …, NathanielJames.org, Journalism.co.uk, Poynter and The Mozilla Blog

Matthew Hawn / Last.fm:

Last.fm Radio becomes a premium feature on mobile and home entertainment devices — On February 15, the radio service built into Last.fm mobile apps and on home entertainment devices will become an ad-free, subscriber-only feature. — Last.fm Radio will remain free on the Last.fm website in the US …

Discussion: VentureBeat, rbr.com, Evolver.fm, Electronista, paidContent, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web, Download Squad, MacStories and SlashGear, more at Techmeme »

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

Best (and worst) Super Bowl social media moments — More people than ever watched the Super Bowl with an eye on their Twitter stream, making this the most social of all Super Sundays to date. From the commercials to the halftime show, here are some of the best (and worst) social moments of the Super Bowl:

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Former WikiLeaks Colleagues Forming New Web Site, OpenLeaks — LONDON — As the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fights extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual wrongdoing, a dozen of his former colleagues are creating an alternative Web site for leaks to be governed …

Discussion: The Nation

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
NYT's Keller Almost Ready to Admit WikiLeaks Is Journalism

Discussion: Guardian and The Huffington Post, Thanks:mathewi

Nora Paul / Online Journalism Review:

Curation questions and the start of some answers — By Nora Paul, Kathleen A. Hansen, Yoshi Suzuki: Information curation, like data visualization, is one of the buzzwords being used by those trying to guide, and goad, news organizations into thinking about new content models.