Today’s as good as any for making it right. News Corp. stopped paying their phone hacking private eye’s legal fees, and The Huffington Post has reinstated the “over-aggregator” Amy Lee, reports Romenesko.
Ms. Lee was “suspended indefinitely” by editor Peter Goodman following a dust-up with AdAge’s Simon Dumenco, whose reporting she had summarized. Many pointed out that that’s what she’d been trained to do, and even Mr. Dumenco original complaint suggested the HuffPost’s ethics should be addressed from the top down. Anything else tends to look like a cover-up. They listened!
“We have completed an internal review of the process and policies relating to the publication of stories on HuffPost, and are pleased to welcome Amy Lee back to our newsroom. We are confident in her abilities and look forward to her contributions,” spokesman Mario Ruiz told Poynter.
Dragging a hulking company like AOL through a 180 degree editorial turn is probably really hard and (for reasons related to their own employment and influence) media critics are probably watching more closely than AOL shareholders. At least they didn’t put Arianna Huffington in front of the decision for some too-sincere PR spectacle.
