Huffington hits out at Murdoch speech; Guardian, 12/2/09

Mercedes Bunz, Guardian; Huffington hits out at Murdoch speech:

Huffington Post founder says aggregation is 'part of the web's DNA' and tells old media organisations to 'get real'

"Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington has accused Rupert Murdoch of confusing aggregation with misappropriation following his Federal Trade Commission speech claiming "There's no such thing as a free news story".

Huffington began in a humorous vein: "First of all, I would like to quote my great grandmother who likes to say: 'Never bet on a company that takes itself out of Google.'"

Then she introduced the audience to the three topics of her speech: "One, desperate times lead to desperate metaphors; two, desperate times lead to desperate revenue models; three, desperate times desperately call for better journalism."

She added: "I've talked about how the future of journalism will be a hybrid future where traditional media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism)...

After these statements she finished her attack saying: "And now they want to call 'Time out!' and start questioning 'fair use' – have you heard that? – as well as praising the first amendment. Basically they are attacking new media for being, well, new and transformational and there to stay. Get real you guys, the world has changed.""