Huffington’s blog isn’t fulfilling potential -- yet

During the admirably mounted publicity campaign leading up to Monday’s online launch of her new megablog/news site, commentator and activist Arianna Huffington was repeatedly asked whether her celebrity contributors would employ ghost writers.

She said no and, now that www.huffingtonpost.com is up and running, it’s clear that her reply was completely candid.

It’s also clear that most of the celebrity bloggers, who are supposed to give Huffington’s new venture its special claim on our over-taxed attention, became famous for something other than thinking and writing.

To be fair, Huffington says she has signed more than 200 contributors to participate in her “group blog’s” online conversation, so the sample available by midday Monday may not be wholly representative of what’s to come. Moreover, no publication -- virtual or print -- deserves to be judged on its first edition. Convention, however, demands a first impression, so:

Huffingtonpost.com is a handsomely designed site with an intelligent, rather elegant architecture. Photographs are usefully deployed, and audio and video clips are promised, though none was posted as of Monday. The home page -- think cover -- is divided between the blog’s “featured posts” -- those from the celebrities -- and breaking news items -- the latter in the manner of the Drudge Report, one of whose former staff members is producing it. There are clear links to the rest of the blog posts on offer and to a so-called news wire culled from various sources. This is accompanied by an extremely well selected list of links to other bloggers, as well as domestic and foreign news organizations.

All very nice. Then we get to issue of precisely what it is that fills these stylish niches and things become a bit rocky.

THE celebrity contributors to Monday’s launch were mercifully brief -- more blurbers than bloggers. Unless you harbor a masochistic streak, you’ll probably think that’s for the best, as their submissions range from merely precious to incoherent.

* Arthur Schlesinger Jr. seems to want to debate President George W. Bush on the impact of Yalta. Talk abut fighting the last war.

* If you put a gun to this writer’s head, he still could not tell you what Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her husband, Brad Hall, were trying to say.

* Mike Nichols’ contribution is a small lesson on the confusion of profundity and pretension.

* Ellen DeGeneres is worried about wild horses.

* John Cusack has been to Hunter S. Thompson’s memorial service and informs us that “all the good ones seem to be moving on these days....” Somebody must help him pick his scripts.

* David Mamet convincingly demonstrates, as he did in the Opinion section of Sunday’s Times, why it is that playwrights customarily test their new material discreetly out of town.

The best of the celebrity bloggers turn out to be people who, in fact, are famous for doing journalism of one sort or another. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, whose columns are a regular feature of the National Review Online’s excellent clutch of conservative commentators, is interesting, as are Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, editor-turned-columnist Tina Brown, and Huffington herself. Former defense attorney and Court TV analyst Rikki Klieman, who happens to be married to LAPD chief William Bratton, weighs in with a provocative posting on the pro-prosecution slant in television coverage of the Michael Jackson case but is far too brief and fails to name names.

It’s hard to know what to make of the Huffingtonpost’s media critic -- everybody has to have one these days -- satirist and actor Harry Shearer. Apparently, he plans to pursue what might be termed the Venus Fly Trap school of journalism, sitting and waiting for people to send him items:

“[W]e’re looking for your observations and contributions,” he writes. “If you’re in the media business, and have a tasty story of the sausage-making process, this would be a fine place to serve it up. If you’re a reader or viewer who sees more than Howard Kurtz or Eric Burns does, come on in and help out with the dishes.”

Given the irrepressible human propensity to betray and snitch one another off, it’ll probably work, and Shearer being who he is, he’ll probably make something pointedly funny out of it.

ON first impression, the news side of the Huffingtonpost seems even less promising. The top item, announced as an “exclusive,” is a summary of Gerald Posner’s forthcoming book, which alleges that the Saudi royals have wired their oil fields with destructive devices, including dirty bombs. Two commentators on the post -- “terrorism expert” Daniel Pipes and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Brian Haig, also seem to have had access to the manuscript. In fact, Haig informs readers that “Gerald does note -- with characteristic accuracy and good reporting -- that (the doomsday device) might not exist, that possibly the Saudis have engaged in an elaborate charade to plant the seeds of its existence.”

Oh.

The second news item -- “the New York Times to Start Blog” -- is simply wrong. The headline is drawn from a business section story in Monday’s New York Times outlining a series of recommendations made to executive editor Bill Keller. The error went uncorrected well into the afternoon.

The site’s comments section tends to be pretty much like the comment sections on most blogs -- one of those populist exercises that more obviously displays democracy’s weaknesses than its strengths.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the early edition of the Huffingtonpost is the way in which it fails to exploit the potential advantages of its online situation. The notion of having knowledgeable commentators analyze breaking news in real time under one tent is a fairly exciting prospect. The design of this site could make that possible, if the news were, in fact, breaking and the commentators were, in fact, knowledgeable and up to the task.

What’s disconcerting about the Huffingtonpost is that it’s new media mired in old media thinking.