Updated at 3:30 pm:
Andrew Breitbart calls to say that this post by Finke actually helped Arianna Huffington get on the map.
"The blogosphere didn’t want Arianna to succeed," he said. "When Nikki Finke misfired, and this came out the morning the site came out — meaning she wrote it before she saw the site — it granted Arianna sympathy at the exact moment she needed it."
Breitbart's pal Matt Drudge picked up Finke's post, which gave it wide distribution.
"That, to me, was 100 percent sympathy-inducing. It was such an unfair, jealous assessment," Breitbart said.
Earlier:
The Internet can have a brutal memory.
Here’s what Nikki Finke wrote in 2005 upon the launch of The Huffington Post, which is being acquired by AOL for $315 million:
“The Madonna of the mediapolitic world has undergone one reinvention too many. She has now made an online ass of herself.”
Finke continues:
“This website venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable. Her blog is such a bomb that it’s the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one. In magazine terms, it’s the disastrous clone of Tina Brown's Talk, JFK Jr's George or Maer Roshon's Radar.”
Last night she reported the sale without a trace of irony and with a lack of customary spin either, offering up the press release and the news as “AOL’s biggest acquisition since it split from Time Warner in 2009.”
Finke’s post on Arianna was one of the most savage tears she has ever committed to print. Among other insults she called the blog “a sick hoax,” called Huffington “played out,” and the venture “misstep after misstep.” It is also one of her most crushingly wrong news judgments.
Unfortunately for Finke, anyone can read it and judge for herself. Here it is – the judgment on an apparently stillborn Huffington Post, circa May 2005.
Why Arianna’s Blog Blows
By Nikki Finke Thursday, May 12 2005
Judging from Monday’s horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has undergone one reinvention too many. She has now made an online ass of herself. What her bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree right-to-left conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn’t accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly. This website venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable. Her blog is such a bomb that it’s the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one. In magazine terms, it’s the disastrous clone of Tina Brown’s Talk, JFK Jr’s George or Maer Roshan's Radar.
No matter what happens to Huffington, it’s clear Hollywood will suffer the consequences. It seems like some sick hoax. Perhaps Huffington is no longer a card-carrying progressive but now a conservative mole. Because she has served up liberal celebs like red meat on a silver platter for the salivating and Hollywood-hating right wing to chew up and spit out. I hear that prominent liberals in L.A. and N.Y. and Washington D.C. are aghast not just that she’s encouraged jejune rants by their liberal brethren, but that she’s also provided yet another forum for select right-wing blowhards. They don’t understand why Arianna has saddled progressives with that "Hollywood elitist" branding.
If you can stand to read more it's here…
