Betsy Morgan - FishbowlNY

Excitement For BusinessWeek Deal At MPA Conference

Amanda Ernst — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:30:00 +0000

Yesterday, we spent a few hours at the Magazine Publishers of America‘s Magazine Innovation Summit. In between panels and interviews like The New York Times‘ David Carr‘s Q&A with Ken Auletta of The New Yorker (right), we got a chance to catch up with some of New York media’s movers and shakers and pick their brains.

First, we asked Carr what he thought of Bloomberg LP’s acquisition of BusinessWeek. The media columnist was practically giddy with excitement. “It’s great news for people like you and me,” Carr told us, complaining that the media industry has been sorely lacking in fun deals to report on. “I couldn’t help but get involved in Stephanie’s story,” he said referring to the article about the deal he co-bylined with Stephanie Clifford for the Times yesterday.

Carr’s excitement was mirrored by BusinessWeek.com‘s John Byrne, who interviewed Netflix CEO Reed Hastings after lunch.

“There was a little activity at BusinessWeek this morning,” Byrne said. He then went on to say how happy he was to be going to work for Bloomberg, remarking that it was a “great place” for the business magazine to be.

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HuffPost Appoints New President And CRO

Amanda Ernst — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:10:00 +0000

Just a few months after naming Eric Hippeau CEO, The Huffington Post today announced a new executive appointment.

Greg Coleman, former executive vice president of global sales at Yahoo!, has been picked to succeed James Smith as chief revenue officer at HuffPo. Coleman will also be taking on the role of president for the online publication.

Most recently, Coleman served as president of Platform-A, AOL‘s advertising business. Before that he worked as president and CEO of the start-up NetSeer and served as EVP of global sales at Yahoo!. He also previously worked as senior vice president at Reader’s Digest Association, was the founding publisher of Memories magazine and headed up advertising efforts at Woman’s Day.

Currently, Coleman is an adjunct professor at The McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, his alma mater, and sits on the board of the Advertising Council, where he formerly held the post of chairman.

Hippeau, managing partner of venture capital firm SoftBank Capital and HuffPost board member, was named CEO in June, replacing Betsy Morgan, who left the company and vacated her seat on the board.

Earlier: Updated: Huffington Post Gets New CEO

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Former HuffPo CEO On Departure: “Bummer”

Amanda Ernst — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:45:00 +0000

On Monday, the Huffington Post announced that it had named a new CEO, longtime board member and venture capitalist Eric Hippeau. Current CEO Betsy Morgan, who joined the online publication in October 2007 from CBSNews.com, would be stepping down and relinquishing her own spot on the HuffPo board, the company reported.

When we spoke to HuffPo founder and namesake Arianna Huffington later that day, she told us the move had been in the works for awhile and that the split was amicable. Morgan, on the other hand, told Fortune‘s Patricia Sellers that “her firing came as a surprise to her.”

“Bummer,” Morgan told Sellers, although she made a point to say that she was not bitter about her dismissal. Morgan is also unsure what she’s going to do next. “My biggest question is do I help fix an old media business or do I help grow a new one?” she said.

Meanwhile, The New York Observer has an interview today with new CEO Hippeau, who has been tasked with the job of turning a profit at HuffPo. Traffic and ad revenues grew tremendously under Morgan, but the company has get to make a profit.

“I don’t think we really need to fix very much,” Hippeau told the Observer. “I think the Huffington Post is doing quite well, and you can tell that by the metrics. I’m not here to fix it; I’m here to grow it.”

Earlier: Updated: Huffington Post Gets New CEO

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Updated: Huffington Post Gets New CEO

Amanda Ernst — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:45:00 +0000

Eric Hippeau, managing partner of venture capital firm SoftBank Capital, has been named CEO of The Huffington Post. Hippeau, a HuffPo board member, is taking over for Betsy Morgan, who joined the online pub in October 2007 from CBSNews.com. She is leaving the company and vacating her spot on the board, the company said.

Hippeau was formerly the CEO of Ziff-Davis, where he led the company’s online initiatives including growing the ZDnet brand. SoftBank acquired Ziff-Davis in 1995 and Hippeau stayed in his role until 2000 when the company was sold. At SoftBank, he helped secure Series-A financing for the HuffPo in 2006, becoming an early investor.

Under Morgan’s leadership, the Huffington Post has grown rapidly and co-founders Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer had nothing but good things to say about her.

Update: Huffington spoke to FishbowlNY and told us that the decision to appoint Hippeau was not a last minute move for the company, but rather something that had been in the works for awhile.

“Betsy has been a great CEO, and we owe our recent successes to her leadership — our six-fold increase in traffic, the doubling of our ad revenue,” Huffington said. “But we want to explore all the possibilities for expansion and for acquisitions, and we need the additional firepower of someone with Eric’s experience.”

Although Hippeau has been working closely with the Huffington Post for several years — thanks to his position on the small, four-person board — Huffington said she never thought he would “want to leave the life of a venture capitalist and join us in a full time role.” And, because he has been working with the company for quite some time, he can “hit the road running,” Huffington said. “He doesn’t have a learning curve.”

Full release after the jump

Earlier: New CEO For HuffPo

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Mirror Awards Take Heat For Honoring Huffington

Amanda Ernst — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:39:00 +0000

Advertising Age‘s Simon Dumenco is outraged that Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications is awarding Arianna Huffington its Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award at next week’s Mirror Awards, and not just because AdAge has never won a Mirror prize. Dumenco is upset because, to him, Huffington represents all that is wrong in the world of journalism right now.

Dubbing Huffington’s Mirror Award the “Most Bitterly Ironic Media Award” in his column today, Dumenco said that the Newhouse school, which trains journalists, “should know better than to honor a woman who thinks journalists should work for free!”

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Things Left Unsaid?: The New Yorker Profiles Arianna Huffington

Glynnis — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:52:44 +0000

For the past few weeks rumors have abounded that The New Yorker was preparing a “hit piece” on Arianna Huffington. Since the term “hit piece” is not something we normally associate with The New Yorker we had our suspicions as to how hard-hitting it was actually going to be. Still, word on the street was that New Yorker scribe Lauren Collins had been doing some digging, so who knew!

Well turns out all the concern (anticipation?) was unnecessary. Collin’s profile is a mostly flattering one (Huffington is “one of the Anglophone world’s most nimble and ubiquitous communicators”), revealing very little about the woman behind the online media empire (full disclosure: we worked at HuffPo for a short time and continue to make intermittent appearances). So, the question on everyone’s mind now appears to be, were there perhaps some things that Collins missed (like, is it strange there’s no mention of Huffington Post CEO Betsy Morgan)?

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HuffPo Not Returning to 1993 Anytime Soon

Glynnis — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:01:45 +0000

Earlier today Portfolio picked up on an interview Huffington Post CEO Betsy Morgan recently gave to her alumni magazine in which she addresses HuffPo’s no-pay policy (and yes, we are one of the many who have written for them) and seems to suggest that this is something that may change in the near future.

Not all of the plays have been written yet for this company. That said, we have a very good relationship with our bloggers; we’re unbelievably respectful of them. By blogging, they get terrific exposure and our brand gives them a unique platform. We’ve had a positive two-way relationship with them. Could that include money at some point? Sure. But it feels very 1993 to say, ‘Hey, it’s all about the check that I get at the end of the month.’

Isn’t time travel grand! However, before you get too, too excited, when we contacted HuffPo to get some clarification on this they told us: “There are no plans to pay our bloggers, but those who want to join our (growing) full-time staff of paid writers and editors are more than welcome to apply for positions as they become open.” Meaning, we presume, that for the time being exposure will have to suffice, though, as we are all discovering, attention can be its own sort of payment. Use with care!

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