The Huffington Post

Last week in class, my fellow classmates and I talked a lot about the various types and brands of assorted media sources. To be a bit more specific, the majority of our discussion was centered on Arianna Huffington's The Huffington Post. Establishing itself as an "Internet Newspaper," the website consists mainly of blogs of celebrity authors (both actual celebrities and scholarly writers) and their discussion of the current news and media. Although being a news source is obviously the main purpose of the website, I think it is the Internet aspect and the opportunities it presents that has made the brand so successful. In fact, it has even branded itself, under the masthead, with the identifiers: news blogs video community.
 The fact that the source is primarily Internet-based gives it an edge in the social networking world, offering readers the opportunity to connect The Huffington Post to your Facebook or Twitter page, thereby electronically branding yourself as a HuffPot reader and inspiring a sense of community between others.

As for the layout of the website, The Huffington Post is quite different from most other media sources' websites. Aside from the gigantic headline and leading picture following the also enormous masthead, the site is blocked into three columns with most readings in no particular order. So, how is one to know what exactly is most newsworthy or important? Well, the editor actually does tend to put the most important blogs in the center column running until about 5 rows down. Though, other than that, it's really up to the readers to figure out as the scroll bar on the side just keeps going and going and going with various types of blogs, spanning from political to entertainment to religion. Therefore, if you do not have a lot of time to spend browsing the website or are not looking for a way to procrastinate in a semi-intellectual manner, this form of media source may not be for you... However, if you're like me, and tend to view things in a sort of ADD manner anyways, you will probably take a liking to the website. GO NUTS!