As far as real estate rumors go, "We think it’s a townhouse on E. 80th St." is fairly weak. But there are signs that Ms. Huffington might be in the market. Donald Trump said that he jacked up the rent on an apartment at 502 Park Avenue specifically to keep Ms. Huffington, his sworn enemy, out when she was considering renting there last year. And last we heard she was renting a townhouse in the West Village.

In the event that Ms. Huffington has not bought already, but is seriously considering it, we've prepared a portfolio of available townhouses for her perusal. Our favorite is the Woolworth Mansion, but there are a lot of other strong contenders out there, including one that has suspiciously disappeared from the market.

kvelsey@observer.com

Facebook flap: Research teams at Morgan Stanley and other Facebook underwriters cut earnings projections after updated regulatory filings on May 9 showed Zuck & Co. struggling to make money on mobile—and those adjusted projections put Ma & Pa Facebook Fan at a disadvantage. How's that? The less-rosy projections, which Reuters reports Facebook urged on its investment bankers, were distributed to the big pools of money, but not to retail investors.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's self-regulator, says the issue bears scrutiny, and the state of Massachusetts has subpoenaed Morgan Stanley. Henry Blodget is mad.

But it appears that rules that forbid underwriters from "marketing" IPOs by widely publishing research in the weeks before an offering will give Facebook's bankers cover. Likewise, for all the hand-wringing Nasdaq's executives have done over Friday's botched opening, the exchange's plan to return $13 million to investors feels like so many small potatoes.

After all, Facebook fell to $31 yesterday, down 18 percent from its offering price, wiping out billions in market value.

Said what, when?: “Our focus is on the quality of their risk disclosure,” said SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro at Senate Banking Committee hearings yesterday. Ms. Schapiro's remarks indicated that the agency will focus on JPMorgan's Value at Risk calculations, according to Bloomberg.

No fee for you: Investors such as the Harvard University endowment and Abu Dhabi are building in-house operations for real estate investment, in hopes of side-stepping fees charged by so-called pooled funds.

Patch-y feeling: Starboard Value, the activist investor waging a proxy battle for seats on AOL's board, said that Patch, the company's hyper-local news service, should be sold in part or whole, or closed outright. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has promised to make Patch profitable by next year.

Cards checked: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing new rules for prepaid debit cards, which have become a growing source of income for banks in recent years. "The people who use prepaid cards are, in many instances, the most vulnerable among us,” Richard Cordray, the consumer bureau’s director, said in a statement.

Domino effect: European banks have taken preparatory measures for a Greek collapse, but remain vulnerable to likely deposit-flight and rising defaults in Portgual, Italy and Spain in the event that Greek leaves the eurozone.

Timber!: The Ontario Securities Commission filed a fraud suit against Sino-Forest, the Chinese timber company that lost much of its $6 billion market value on the Toronto stock exchange after Muddy Waters Research published a report indicating that the company had overstated resources.

The auction for the patents began last fall, part of the company's long term plan to "unlock value" for shareholders. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2012, and the company says it plans to return a significant portion of the proceeds to shareholders.

Meanwhile, WWD caught AOL and Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington at her book party for Kathy Freston (Ms. Freston introduced Ms. Huffington to her business partner Kenneth Lerer), to find out how she felt about about her growing influence at AOL.

The news that Ms. Huffington had acquired more responsibility at the home of AIM was first reported by The New York Times—and vaguely. The next day, Business Insider conjectured that the Times had been spun by a former NBC publicist decamping to Huffington Post, pointing out that Ms. Huffington had lost quite a bit of editorial responsibility in the reorganization, including over TechCrunch and AOL.com.

At the book party, Ms. Huffington backpedaled on the notion she'd gained more control of AOL.

"I don't see it that way," she told WWD. "Changes are necessary because of the growth of the Huffington Post. Being able to integrate technology and marketing with editorial is going to make it easier for us to grow much stronger."

The Post is currently planning a seventh anniversary party, she added.

“We’ve never had an anniversary party. I think it’s time. There will be clowns and face-painting. That’s what you have for a seven-year-old, don’t you? We never had one before because we were always working.”

Christiane Amanpour (Getty Images)

Attendees at AOL and PBS’s recent joint “Makers Lunch” at AOL Studios in the Village posed in front of a bank of monitors featuring images of Katie Couric, Condoleezza Rice, Sandra Day O’Connor, and other famous femmes. They were celebrating the launch of Makers.com, a site that features video interviews with a number of lady machers who broke through glass ceilings of all sorts; once all the videos are uploaded over the course of the year, the full complement is to include Google’s Marissa Mayer, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, and fashion blogger (and high schooler) Tavi Gevinson.

The videos are building to a TV documentary intended to air on PBS in the first quarter of 2013. As PBS President Paula Kerger told The Transom, “The way we’ll define success is if we’re able to generate significant traffic to the site.” She said that PBS had been looking for an opportunity to partner with AOL for a long time: “There can be a nice alignment between corporations and nonprofits.”

Per AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, both AOL and PBS had been pitched separately on the Makers series by its producers, and both bit. A meeting in Washington between Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Kerger forged the partnership by which PBS and AOL’s sites will both host some content and promote it in their own ways. PBS will send the programming through broadband to classrooms, and its flagship station in Washington will issue grants to local affiliates to promote Makers in local communities. AOL is to place content on Patch and the Huffington Post; Mr. Armstrong said that he had met with all AOL editors to discuss how to further promote Makers, and Maureen Sullivan, SVP of Brand for AOL, told the assembled crowd that the videos had been “tagged with a layer of metadata” for viewers looking for inspiration. (Tags include “work-life balance” and “imperfection.”)

Would we end up seeing Mr. Armstrong’s celebrity-blogger partner on Makers? “Arianna would be [a Maker], clearly. And so would Pat Mitchell and Susan Lyne on our board.” But? “We agreed a year and a half ago that no employees of AOL, PBS, or Unilever can be on the list." Unilever's included because the Makers series is sponsored by a soap for women with sensitive skin.

The only Maker we spotted in attendance was Christiane Amanpour, until recently of ABC News’s This Week. When the makers of Makerspresented the crowd a quick excerpt of Barbara Walters’s interview about her own trailblazing, Ms. Amanpour pointed and laughed (though not exactly in a derisive way)—and left promptly, before the meal-ending hot chocolate was served.

New York Times Magazine

AG: After AOL purchased The Huffington Post last year, I interviewed Arianna Huffington. She hung up on me and complained to my editors. So I was pleasantly surprised that you agreed to this interview.

TA: I read the interview when it came out, and it looked like it was rough. We don’t hold grudges around here.

Back in April, Mr. Goldman and Ms. Huffington got into it over the alleged red shift that had struck the news site, once known as the liberal's Drudge Report, since its merger with AOL.

AG: You’ve been saying recently that The Huffington Post is not a lefty publication?
AH: Actually I’ve been saying that for three years. The tag line that we’ve used a lot is “Beyond left and right.”

Three years ago was 2008. I looked at The Huffington Post a great deal during the election. It felt like the Internet version of Keith Olbermann’s show, and if that’s not lefty. . . .
Why don’t you be more specific? What were the messages that you considered lefty?

It’s as if you’re trying to tell me that Smurfs aren’t blue.
I’m just telling you that it is very clear that we have progressive views, but to call everything we’re doing lefty — it misses the whole point that American policy needs to be redefined beyond left and right. It’s a completely obsolete view of politics.

Still, I’m amazed you’re trying to tell me that The Huffington Post wasn’t started as a lefty blog?
I’m not trying to tell you anything. I’m telling you things. I’m not trying, O.K.?

Despite this attack on his so-called work wife, Mr. Armstrong is able to carry on a lighthearted but substantive conversation about the company. He denies that AOL's revenue is entirely made up of little old ladies who don't know they're still subscribed to it, promises he is not challenging Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and says, actually, under-30s have very positive brand associations with AOL because of our wasted youths on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).

It all appears to be very civilized but, considering the recent revelation about Ms. Huffington's interview, we would be naive to think we know what goes down between Mr. Goldman and his subjects. Who knows what curse words, personal insults and threats of physical violence wound up on the cutting room floor after this interview was, as they say, condensed and edited?

Ms. Tsotsis, Freedom Fighter (or something like it).

It is now safe to say she appears tired of holding out.

Last night in a blog post for TechCrunch—who recently lost their longtime CEO Heather Harde—Ms. Tsotsis noted the departures of some of AOL's top brass as continued cause for concern for AOL's investors, especially after AOL responded to one investor's public letter bashing the company with a mild-mannered public statement. Ms. Tsotsis noted, in traditional TechCrunch fashion, just how worrisome the condition of the company signing her paychecks happens to be (emphasis ours):

Even TechCrunch needed, and still needs, founder Michael Arrington in order to thrive. Perhaps even more so we needed our former CEO Heather Harde. Under Heather we reportedly increased revenue by 50% the tumultuous first year we were under AOL, to $15 million – over 2x what the entire media business is worth according to financials. Tim [Armstrong, CEO of AOL], you should have done anything and everything to get Heather to stay.

I know at least two other people on our team who share my sentiment. [...]

I’m beginning to feel stupid for still being here, especially after reading this tepid “Everything is totally okay” response from my bosses’ bosses tonight. Everything is not okay, and someone needs to make that clear to them.

Ms. Tsotsis then noted on Twitter today:

Given the fact that Mr. Arrington was seen as biting the hand that fed him on the way out, we remain eager to see just how satisfied Ms. Tsotsis is with her employer come January, assuming it's still the same one. For the record, her URL on the original post:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/21/greatest-trick-the-devil-ever-pulled-was-bebo-to-aol-for-850-million/

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

You have a very close relationship with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. Tell us something we may not know about him.

Obviously he's very powerful, a television genius. Even his critics will cop to that. But he is also somebody who looks out for the people who work for him. A couple years ago, I had a very bad stalking problem. I was living alone in D.C. In addition to security Fox provided me, Roger offered to pay out of his own pocket for special dead bolts throughout my home. It was just a small thing, but he didn't have to do it. I had a boss who cared, and it made me feel better.

Do you think Fox is biased?

No. Fox News covers stories that some other news outlets won't cover. We ask some questions that other news outlets wouldn't ask. And sometimes that's perceived as bias by people who've grown up in a world where there are only liberal outlets.

She says that Glenn Beck did not harm Fox's credibility because he was clearly labeled as an "opinion host," and, later, that the problem with Jon Stewart is that people think The Daily Show is actual news that made an attempt to be fair.

Did a series of financial fiction in Le Monde lead to a 15% drop in share price for French bank Société Générale? Possibly, according to the New York Times! A few weeks after the bank was featured in the series, the London tabloid The Mail ran a speculative news story about Société Générale's imminent collapse, perhaps based rumors sparked by a lousy translation. It turns out the bank's doing fine; The Mail issued an apology. (The denouement of the fictional series, ironically, is that British journalists fuel rumors that lead to the demise of the Euro.) The series was controversial within France for political reasons. Quelle yarn! Read-le!

Time Warner Cable is in talks to purchase Insight Communications Co., the country's ninth largest cable provider, for $3B., reports Bloomberg and others. Never heard of them? They service customers in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.

How are things over at AOL? The Wall Street Journal reports that traffic is up 3%, thanks to the Huffington Post, but barely covering the dips at their old properties.  37% of AOL's revenue still comes from subscriptions and 16% is tied to Web-search advertising--revenues from which declined more than 20% in the second quarter.

Twitter is making us poor readers, according to The Guardian, and killing off big ideas, according to The New York Times. Bill Keller is waiting for a high five somewhere.

I’ve since tried erotic G-chatting and sexy Skyperbation, and I once put the kink back in Kinko’s by photocopying and faxing a smooshed boob to a young man I fancied in college. I even lost one of my virginities (never mind which one) to a Second Life avatar named LycheeNut, who looked like one of Santa’s elves but with bat wings.

Come to think of it, I still get sort of turned on by green boots.

Sadly, ’Nut and I lost touch when I left my laptop in a taxi. (But, baby, if you’re out there, holler!)

Naturally, I hopped on the sexting bandwagon before it had a name, much less made the front page of The New York Times. As my duly elected representative from the state of New York amply demonstrated last month, the practice is more about photos than text, and as a result, I’ve probably spent more time toying with the tilt of a full-length mirror—believe me, it’s all in the angles—than I should admit.

Of course, said representative also amply demonstrated that the sending of such messages poses certain dangers, even with judicious cropping, reminding me that basically every sext I’ve ever sent is probably sitting somewhere out there on a guy’s phone (maybe all of his friends’ phones, too) waiting for an opportune moment to destroy me.

So when I discovered BlackBerry Voice Notes (Apple has a similar app called Voice Memos), which lets you record and send brief audio messages via text or email, I immediately recognized the copious erotic possibilities, as well as the professional risks. But I didn’t actually explore them in earnest until late last year, when I found myself entangled with young man (let’s call him Dre) who early on in our dalliance acknowledged a fondness for vocal cues.

In spite of my experience with sexting, talking dirty out loud was new territory for me, and I found it somewhat absurd initially. But after a little practice, I began to enjoy it. Before long I grew to think of myself as the Len Berman of our late-night sporting events, whispering a play-by-play into Dre’s ear that couldn’t have been any more exciting if I’d whipped out a vuvuzela.

Once I saw the sexual potential of calling an audible, I became determined to apply the latest technology to the task, especially since Dre and I saw each other only once a week or so.

With dick pics in the news, Voice Notes seemed like a safer way to flirt from afar. You see, since speech recognition is still a tricky science (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to phone my friend Gino via voice-activated speed dial and called my “gyno” instead), I figured it must be tougher to get caught by voice than by likeness.

Sending a Voice Note is a bit like leaving a voicemail, but not exactly. For one thing, you don’t need to wait for a mood-killing robot to tell you when to speak or to press 1 for further options and what to do after some beep. And because they appear as texts with attachments, they don’t require users to dial a number to retrieve them.

I hit record.

“You’ve been a baaaaaad boy, haven’t you, Mister?” I said.

I played it back.

Delete.

The possibility of hearing myself meant that I could craft the perfect self-presentation, get the intonation just right and choose my words carefully. It also meant I sort of had to.

I tried again. “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi? Ce soir?”

Delete!

“I’m soooo hot and wet,” I tried again, dissolving into a series of moans and little whimpers. I sounded like a dying giraffe.

I then tried a straightforward approach. “I have a confession to make. When you called me before, you inadvertently interrupted my afternoon self-pleasuring session … ”

Ew. Self-pleasuring? Session??

Too clinical. This was tougher than I’d expected. It was like moaning into an abyss. It would be so much simpler to improvise with the other party physically present, when everything was reciprocal and I could absorb my partner’s cues.

I grabbed a notepad.

Eventually, I succeeded in recounting an intimate anecdote in an octave that sounded appropriately sultry, if a little contrived, and sent my message. I knew it might be a while before Dre was able to open it since he was at work, but my phone rang almost immediately.

It was my dad.

“Sweetie,” he said. “I received the audio file you sent me.”

A moment passed.

“Sweetheart, are you there?” he asked.

“Dad. I … I really messed up.”

“I can’t seem to get the damned thing open! Do I click somewhere? Can you just tell me your news over the phone?”

“Oh, nothing major. Just wanted to say hi!”

I hung up and went to resend the message, but not without quadruple-checking the “to” field.

Forty-five minutes later, I received a reply from Dre. It showed up as a little microphone icon.

I hit play.

“I want to take my tongue and slowly work it down your chest and midsection … ” Dre said. Hmm. “Midsection”? But okay. I knew what he meant.

He went on to describe in graphic detail various things he would like to do with, for and to me. It was hot.

Before I could reply, Dre texted: “This is fun!”

And it was. Until the next day, that is, when the little jerk went all Beavis on me, sending me a voice note that sounded remarkably like … was it? Yes, yes it was. A fart.

I was speechless.

Naturally, I’m saving the file … just in case he runs for office.

editorial@observer.com

AOL struck a deal with American Express to use Serve, which is AmEx's competitor to PayPal, on Patch Deals, which is Patch's competitor to Groupon, according to a press release sent out this morning. And we bet their user-feedback is much more advanced than the originals.

Hearst magazine websites will now be shoppable experiences, chief revenue officer Kristine Welker tells the New York Times. That goes beyond mere "shop this look" features, and into full brand partnerships, like one between House Beautiful and Azko Nobel paints.

When scrolling over images of painted walls on the website, users will see similar colors, the price, and a link to buy.

“We look for those mark

eting opportunities that are disruptive, unexpected and true to the brand voice,”Azko Nobel vice president for marketing Rob Horton told the Times.

Just we need, more disruption.

And as long as we're mixing business and editorial, why not de-stigmatize checkbook journalism too? According to Poynter, ABC's Chris Cuomo paid Megan Broussard $10,000-15,000 for her (er, his) Weiner photos. He told Howie Kurtz:

The commercial exigencies of the business reach into every aspect of reporting now … It is my decision. I’m the anchor of ’20/20.’ I could have said, ‘Don’t do it.’ I don’t because it is the state of play right now. I wish it were not. I wish money was not in the game. But you know, it’s going to go somewhere else. You know someone else is going to pay for the same things. The question becomes what you’re paying for. You’re paying for these photos, why? Because they are the key to the exchanges. And this became about photos. This became about things that had to be real. So I needed them. And that is the state of play, Howie, I wish it were not. You do too. But it is the state of play.

But according to AOL/HuffPo editor Saul Hansell, Patch is simply ahead of it's time. It's like building the railroad 150 years ago, he said on a panel about the Future of Media (unrelated to the "Future of Media" report by the FCC which Mr. Peters and Mr. Stelter refer to.) We assume he meant that Patch's infrastructure and influence will redeem its high overhead costs, but let's not forget that the transcontinental railroad was mostly realized by underpaid imported laborers, too.

If you get off on making and listening to smug prognostications, we suggest throwing your name in the hat for Columbia Journalism Review editor in chief. "The editor in chief position was made possible by a funder, and I think part of the idea is somebody who enjoys meeting funders and being on future-of-journalism panels more than I do. I would rather go to the dentist than be on a panel," CJR executive editor Mike Hoyt told Romenesko.