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Former Ms. Magazine Editor Mary Thom Dead at 68 (AP / Huffington Post)
Prominent feminist Mary Thom, a writer and former editor of Ms. magazine who also was an avid motorcyclist, crashed while riding on a highway and was killed, her nephew said Saturday. She was 68. NYT Thom joined Ms. magazine in 1972 as an editor, rising to become executive editor in 1990. She was known as a journalistic virtuoso who shaped the writing of many of the feminist movement’s luminaries, including Gloria Steinem.  Ms. “We who are Mary’s friends and family haven’t absorbed her loss yet; it’s too sudden,” said Women’s Media Center co-founders Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda in a statement over the weekend. “Ms. magazine, the Women’s Media Center, the women’s movement and American journalism have suffered an enormous blow. Mary was and will always be our moral compass and steady heart.” FishbowlNY Thom lived for decades in New York City and served as an editor for Ms. for nearly 20 years before leaving the feminist magazine in 1992. The glossy, which began as an insert in New York magazine, became a feminist powerhouse read in the 1970s but struggled to leverage commercial success with its ideological voice.

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For HuffPost Live co-host Jacob Soboroff, a signature moment during his first six months of service involved the 2013 Sundance documentary The Square.

When the filmmakers arrived at the Beverly Hills studio, one was on the phone with an acquaintance in Cairo. By the time the visiting duo sat down for their interview, a producer had arranged for that acquaintance to be part of the on-air discussion as well, as an Egyptian subject matter expert (via Google hangout).

The term “expert” is one of many being redefined daily by Soboroff and colleagues Alyona Minkovski and Nancy Redd from 3 to 7 p.m. PT, when the dynamic trio cap HuffPost Live’s twelve-hour weekday block. An expert can be anyone and everyone, often recruited through social media; journalism meanwhile is very much here a mix of the subjective and objective. As HuffPost Live president Roy Sekoff told us during our visit last Friday, “We want our hosts to have opinions.”

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Combine tasty treats, sleek design and the now famous ‘Sitting Cameramen of Astor Place’ and you get the latest episode of “Cubes.”

In this episode of “Cubes,” the MediabistroTV crew is invited into the New York Headquarters of AOL and The Huffington Post. Hosted by the founding editor of The Huffington Post and president of HuffPost Live, Roy Sekoff, the crew visits the cavernous Huffington Post newsroom where hundreds of writers sit keyboard to keyboard under the watchful gaze of Arianna Huffington herself who plays the always gracious hostess by offering up some tasty Greek Christmas cookies. After burning through the sugar high, the guys mingle with the ghosts of journalism past in the HuffPost Live newsroom where live news is served up eight hours a day by tables of writers, producers and editors who always know what time it is in Funkytown.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

This afternoon, Harvey Weinstein has shared on The Huffington Post the kind of entry that brings back memories of the website’s earliest beginnings. Before the AOL acquisition, before the New York conference room SEO nanosecond expertise, before the third-party content mirroring, it was just Arianna Huffington’s celebrity friends posting their random observations.

Folks like Weinstein, who follows up last night’s lively appearance on Piers Morgan Tonight with a faux trailer for the Mitt Romney drama Hindsight. This Democratic ditty was put together with the help of John Stockwell, Meghan O’Hara and Weinstein’s Silver Linings Playbook star Bradley Cooper.

For good measure, there’s also some soundtrack assistance from Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. Enjoy or – as several already have in the HuffPo comments – dismiss.

Musician Amanda Palmer is taking some heat for her recent efforts to “crowdsource” musicians for her latest concert tour. Palmer, who raised nearly $1.2 million via a Kickstarter campaign to fund her new album and concert, says she cannot afford to pay for a string quartet and a couple of horn players and is asking for volunteer musicians in each city the tour visits.

Palmer vigorously defended asking musicians to play for free via her blog, saying that she’s played many gigs for no pay throughout her long career, and that “this isn’t about money. For me, this is about freedom. And about choices.” Arianna Huffington made a similar argument in defense of her unpaid writers, claiming the opportunity to be heard was reward enough for most contributors. Her network of thousands of bloggers, like Palmer’s devoted fan base, appear to agree.

Palmer, who rose to fame with her former band The Dresden Dolls, told the New York Times she couldn’t afford the extra $35,000 it would cost to hire musicians in place of volunteers. While we don’t know the details of Palmer’s personal finances, it should be noted that she is married to best-selling author, screenwriter and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, whose net worth is estimated at $18 million.

Tickets for the concert will run you about $35. At least Arianna gives it away for free!

When AOL acquired Huffington Post last year, Arianna Huffington was given editorial control of the company’s online properties, including Patch, MovieFone, PopEater, and TechCrunch. Since taking the reigns, Huffington has folded websites and eliminated journalists’ jobs while increasing the practice of utilizing unpaid bloggers leaving her with a critic or two.

Now it’s Huffington’s turn to face a downsizing, in the form of her job duties. She will now be solely in charge of the Huffington Post, according to a report by The Washington Post.

Huffington says the change was her idea. “What I asked for is for us to be more independent, to have technology, marketing and [business development] now into Huffington Post, so that we can accelerate all our growth, and for me to be freed up to just concentrate exclusively on HuffPost,” she stated at a conference Thursday.

The Huffington Post is continuing to grow, with a current focus on international expansion and the launch of a live video streaming network.

Full disclosure: This fishie blogs for the Huffington Post.

The latest article is up at reallatimes.com, a modest parody website launched April 1, 2012. With a headline that makes the destination’s Onion-esque intent perfectly clear: “Local Resident Contemplating Adding Avocado To Sandwich For $1.”

The wishes-to-remain-anonymous (for now) owner tells FishbowlLA via email that all it cost to start the online joke sheet was a $7.99 payment to godaddy.com. “For the most part, it’s a one-person operation,” Mr. X says. “Though on some days, it’s a zero-person operation.”

Along with the fact that an Internet publication can be launched today for the same price as a real-world avocado enhanced sandwich, there’s also this dagger. “I have absolutely no prior professional experience as a journalist,” our mystery man reveals. “But that’s what makes this country great… Look at Arianna Huffington.”

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In the final part of our three-part “Media Beat” interview with Jonah Peretti, the internet entrepreneur talks about launching The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed.

“I wasn’t sure if it would be a big success,” Peretti admits, remembering the days leading up to the launch of The Huffington Post. “A friend of mine asked me if he should invest, and I was like ‘I’m not sure’… I didn’t really want to risk my friend’s money.”

He also offers advice for those wanting to launch their own startup, explaining that entrepreneurs shouldn’t worry about what tech blogs are covering.

Part 1: BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti: ‘Our Reporters Are Doing the Kind of Work Reporters Love to Do’

Part 2: Jonah Peretti On What It Means To Go Viral

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

TechCrunch found Michael Arrington, who was fired from the site he founded last September, is not pleased with what he perceives to be the decapitation of TechCrunch’s editorial team by Arianna Huffington. Arrington took to his blog yesterday to protest the recent firing of TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld, calling Huffington “a very touchy psychopath conducting a game of musical chairs to the death.”

More from Arrington:

Arianna Huffington seems to enjoy fucking with TechCrunch in her leisure time. She put all her weight behind Schonfeld when I left. But within a few weeks the rumors were that she was furious at him for the way the news broke about MG Siegler joining CrunchFund.

I doubt Erick even realized, but he was a marked man from that day on. Yes, something that petty can piss her off…

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Such a bruising, controversial media presence, author, blogger, publisher and perennial Occupy movement basher Andrew Breitbart has shockingly passed away at age 43. Less than an hour ago, Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Joel B. Pollak posted the following In Memoriam statement:

With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart. Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles.

We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior. Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love.

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