Sekoff and Huffington. (Image via Getty)

Democratic advisors Peter Daou and James Boyce are carrying on with their bitter lawsuit claiming that Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer stole their idea for a liberal Drudge Report and cut them out of control and ownership of The Huffington Post.

Though many of the pair's claims were dismissed in October, a judge allowed them to go into discovery on a theft of idea claim, according to paidContent. An amended complaint filed yesterday alleges that emails and meeting minutes between Ms. Huffington, HuffPost editor Roy Sekoff and the late Andrew Breitbart reveal a plan to cover up Mr. Daou and Mr. Boyce's involvement, which we've excerpted below:

Because Defendants knew that they had stolen the idea for The Huffington Post,they also knew that they needed to develop a false account of the website’s origins that cut Boyce and Daou out of the picture. Huffington and Lerer discussed this problem during a meeting with Sekoff and Breitbart on March 29, 2005, where the four of them discussed possible responses to press inquiries on the subject of how and when the idea for the website originated.The minutes of that meeting reflect the deliberate creation of a false and fraudulent “narrative” to explain the origin of the idea for The Huffington Post. As reflected in the minutes, the participants at this meeting asked: “How did the project get started? What’s the narrative? …How did the idea for the Huffington Report originate?” In response, Breitbart proposed this answer: “I knew what was missing in the blogosphere, I just needed the rolodex to be able to putit all together, and Arianna provided that. … Arianna called Andrew to talk about an alternative to the Drudge Report. Andrew called Arianna about the group blog - there’s nobody he knows besides Arianna who could make this work.”

The minutes reflect a follow-up question: “So how did Kenny come into the picture? How did he and Arianna come together to work on this project?” This time, the answer was proffered by Sekoff and Breitbart: “It doesn’t matter.” Breitbart then added: “He met you and is retired and excited to leave retirement to join you in this project.” After briefly discussingthe function of the website, the minutes record a return to a discussion of the “narrative.”Breitbart states, “It’s all about coming up with the group blog."

The moral here is never found anything. It only leads to pettiness, embarrassment and unspeakable wealth.

"FWD is a way to share things. To pass them on. To nudge the conversation about technology in a different direction--maybe not the next level, exactly, but at least a different one. It's fundamentally social, which is simply the way more and more of the web works now. Social is the web's new reality."

His little manifesto got us thinking. Just about every time the well funded news site makes a big announcement, a new staffer gives the meta-media a couple of quotes about the value and the allure of the social web.

As we recall, it all started when BuzzFeed hired Ben Smith as its editor in chief. A well-regarded Politico blogger, his faith in social content distribution was like a vote of confidence from a community of journalists who are digitally native but still serious about journalism.

“There is nothing more exciting for journalism and reporting than the social web,” said Mr. Smith. “Social media is what moves a story. It has become the primary way people, from plugged-in insiders to casual readers, get their news. BuzzFeed is the best in the world at distributing content on social sites, and it is a tremendous opportunity to join BuzzFeed -- and its millions of readers -- to build a new model for high-quality reporting."

According to Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed's next big hire, Doree Shafrir, was "ahead of her time writing stories with the emotional intelligence and social impact that has now become the currency of the social web."

Ms. Shafrir told AdWeek, it was partly the opportunity to "be a part in the growth of the social web” that convinced her to leave Rolling Stone.

At Rolling Stone, Michael Hastings got the commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan fired. But at BuzzFeed, where he was recently hired as the Obama  campaign correspondent, he'll be at the reportorial avant-garde.

"Social publishing is the future of journalism, or at least huge part of its future," Mr. Hastings said, "By joining BuzzFeed, I'll be at the front and center of that world."

Kate Notopoulos risked Gawker mockery to preach the company gospel. "I believe that Buzzfeed really does 'get' the social web, and I'm excited to add to what they already do best," she told Gawker. "PLEASE DON'T MAKE FUN OF ME FOR SAYING THAT."

Perhaps such coherent messaging is a result of another recent hire. NBC News communications coordinator Ashley McCollum was recently made BuzzFeed's press manager. As Mr. Smith told Politico , Ms. McCollum "has deep roots in television at a great network, but she's also fluent and experienced in the social media where BuzzFeed lives."

Have BuzzFeed's hiring announcements forged an association between the words "BuzzFeed" and "social" in your brain? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Mr. Smith (image via Politico.com)

A major editorial expansion is in the works at BuzzFeed, the viral content aggregator best known for its panda slideshows, and it will be led by an unlikely figure.

Ben Smith, Politico senior writer and longtime New York politics reporter, has been named editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, the company announced today.

According to the release, Mr. Smith will help the site get into the business of original editorial content, hiring new reporters and launching new content sections.

BuzzFeed's content sections are currently limited to "lol", "cute", "win", "fail", "omg", "geeky", "trashy", and "wtf?". The site recently snagged two writers from Gawker Media, Jezebel's Whitney Jefferson and Gawker's Matt Cherette. There are whispers of a redesign early next year.

"Social media is what moves a story," Mr. Smith said in the announcement. "BuzzFeed is the best in the world at distributing content on social sites, and it is a tremendous opportunity to join BuzzFeed--and its millions of reader--to build a new model for high-quality reporting."

Meanwhile, Mr. Smith relaunched his Politico blog a little over a month ago, teaming up with Dylan Byers and Keach Hagey to shift its focus toward political media. He will continue to write about politics for Politico once a week, according to the announcement.

"It's the best place in America to be a political reporter," he said in the announcement.

(For those keeping score, BuzzFeed is "best in the world" for social media, Politico is "best place in America" for political reporting.)

Although Mr. Smith's move may baffle other journalists and politicos, there is probably some financial muscle behind the site's ambitions. BuzzFeed is backed by Softbank, Hearst Interactive, RRE Ventures, Ken Lerer, Ron Conway, Chris Dixon, and John Johnson.

Plus, BuzzFeed management knows its way around a pivot.  Co-founder Jonah Peretti and chairman Mr. Lerer were co-founders of The Huffington Post and have since seen it grow from a liberal version of the Drudge Report to a non-partisan super aggregator and national news operation.

"Social is the new starting point for content sites," said Mr. Peretti, noting that BuzzFeed has grown from eight million monthly unique visitors to over 20 million.

"Social sites are where everyone is getting their news, entertainment, and information and BuzzFeed’s technology platform, combined with original reporting will accelerate this massive shift," said Mr. Lerer.

A few weeks ago, The Observer reported Ben Lerer's Wooster Street apartment purchase, which he and his bride, Emily, bought from Whoopi Goldberg for $2.985 million.

The Thrillister bought his recently swapped Soho loft for $1.575 in 2006 from a Ms. Elizabeth Williams. Considering the recent transfer was within family lines, no broker was needed. However, Halstead's Barbara Godson, who represented Ms. Williams in the 2006 sale, described the spacious one-bedroom to The Observer. "You know, it's a very attractive apartment because it has antique oak beams and large stretches of exposed brick walls. When I was there it was very simply done with large, west-facing windows. Just very attractive."

Hmm, thrilling indeed.

cmalle@observer.com

From: Me

All agree that George C. Wolfe will be a hard act to follow when he steps down next season as producer of the Public. I see you've formed a special search committee to find his successor, and will also be hiring a search firm to search some more. That's an awful lot of searching .

It reminds me of the time I was traveling through the Sahara with a bunch of actors, and one of them wandered off and got lost. We had to send out a search party to look for him. But then, in the urgency and panic, the search party got lost. So we ended up sending out another search party to search for the search party. "Yoo-hoo!" we all called out hopefully in the ghostly, desert silence. "Anyone seen the search party?" We found the actor in the end, by the way. He was up a mountain. He'd left our desert base near Tamanransset at dawn to climb a mountain. It was the last place anyone expected to find him.

It all happened long ago, on a journey through the Sahara with Peter Brook and his deranged troupe of actors. There's a moral! If you want to find what you're looking for, always search in the most unlikely place.

If you'd hired a search firm 10 years ago to find the new head of the Public Theater, you wouldn't have found Mr. Wolfe. The chances are that the conventional search system you now have in place would have rounded up the usual suspects that thrive in boring institutional theaters. But George Wolfe had yet to become George Wolfe. He was found outside the system.

All that was really known about him then was that he'd written a fine play, The Colored Museum , and directed the Broadway musical Jelly's Last Jam (which he also wrote). At heart, he's always been a writer who happens to be a great director! There's never been a production of his-even the few bombs-that we haven't anticipated with the sheer excitement of its possibilities . He brought to the Public the thrilling ingredient of being there . He's an artist who knows how to encourage and cheer for other artists. But his priceless achievement is to have brought the spectrum of New York City into the Public Theater.

It's forgotten now that when he took over at the Public, the theater had lost its way. Your lobby-now bustling with a cross-section of the entire city-was forlorn and empty. Just one meager production was on offer in the last days of the ancien régime (a one-man Beckett show, at that).

My own joy at Mr. Wolfe's tenure has always been in the mirror he held up to the rich diversity of New York, in the tradition of the Public's founder, Joe Papp. He's been truly public -giving voice to downtown minorities and artists on the margins while building an audience who want to hear and be challenged by all they have to tell us. He's the only producer in the city at a major theater to pull off that miracle when our institutions-bloated by subscription lists of white, aging theatergoers content with safe, mediocre fare-don't seem to care.

But from my point of view, Mr. Wolfe's Achilles' heel is his "Broadway-itis." And if I may say so, Mr. Lerer, so is yours. It's understandable. Who doesn't enjoy success and awards ? I'm with George Burns, who said of the Academy Awards that he'd accept Best Actress if they offered it him. But Mr. Wolfe's best work-the wonderful achievements, from his Tempest to Bring in da Noise , to the Suzan-Lori Parks dramas, to Caroline, or Change -weren't staged with Broadway in mind. They exist and thrive proudly at the Public in their own right.

In other fighting words, they fulfill the entire purpose of the nonprofit theater-and the reason for the Public Theater's existence in the first place-by offering a radical alternative to commercial Broadway. But Mr. Wolfe faltered badly only when he lost sight of what he-and the Public-do best. Tempted by commercial success, his productions of On the Town and The Wild Party on Broadway lost $11 million, and the Public lurched into a crisis of its own making.

Yet here you are, Mr. Lerer, in your warm tribute to Mr. Wolfe, proudly listing all his productions that have been transferred to Broadway, as if Broadway is the ultimate seal of approval. If a show at the Public transfers to the Great White Elderly Way for Tourists-fine! May it become another A Chorus Line and earn millions for your theater. But Broadway shouldn't be your ambition and symbol of success. Only fine work at the Public is the point-the fiercely independent, uncompromised aim, a last stronghold against the rule of mediocrity, an ideal, a dream.

But then, I belong to the nonprofit school of thought in which George Devine, the legendary founder of the Royal Court Theatre in London, once chastised his own stunned chairman by writing to him: "We must support our artists at all cost- especially when the critics don't like them."

Who today truly believes that?

The good news is that George Wolfe is to continue directing at the Public in what will be a new era. I'll miss him, though. I'll miss him lurking in the lobby, looking effervescently paranoid and hopeful in his enthusiasm and naked love for theater. As your national search parties continue searching, searching the land for his successor, I hope you won't mind my suggesting that you might try looking around the corner on East Fourth Street for James Nicola at the New York Theatre Workshop.

I've never met him, but I feel I know him through his work. He isn't a showman like Papp-or Mr. Wolfe-but his downtown following is secure and flourishing. He's a successful Off Broadway producer who doesn't direct. His time and interests aren't therefore divided, as Mr. Wolfe's are, to bursting point. (Joe Papp was essentially a producer first and foremost; he rarely directed.) Mr. Nicola has put the New York Theatre Workshop on the map with a consistently intriguing repertoire-including the original gamble of Rent and the challenging work of internationally known dramatists like Caryl Churchill. In his quiet way, he's been running a mini–Public Theater for years.

But I would like to see two new appointments taking the Public into its new era. Mr. Nicola, say, as producer in partnership with a newly created position, Shakespeare producer. Now that the financial crisis at the Public seems to have passed, I'd like you to appoint a full-time producer of Shakespeare for the first time in the Public's history. Joe Papp's greatest legacy was his insistence on the annual Free Shakespeare Festival in the Park. The Public itself was founded on it. It's the most important gift the theater could give to the city, its children and the future.

But what has always been missing is real confidence in performing Shakespeare! There are exceptions, but the productions as a whole have always been notoriously hit-and-miss, the values not all they could be, what with the Brooklyn-accented clowns dropping their pants as always. Last season's Henry V , with its rows of gilt bar-mitzvah chairs in the midst of the battlefield, took the strudel.

I would beg, borrow and steal money to return Shakespeare in the Park to its customary two productions in summer and hire a top producer to train and coach an inner troupe of actors to bring the Shakespeare plays to life. The troupe could also cross-fertilize with the regular productions on the Public's stages. Karin Coonrod is the leading Shakespeare producer in the country. She's done superlative work at Theatre for the New Audience as well as the Public. She even respects the text . She's the one .

I've never met her, either. But there we are! Mr. Nicola as the producer, and Ms. Coonrod as the new Shakespeare producer, would make for exciting times at the Public and continue a great tradition, yes?

Best of luck, anyway.

Yours,

John Heilpern