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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