Masthead watchers delighted in the stream of reporters leaving The Paper of Record for The Huffington Post. Once the aggregating enemy of former Times executive editor Bill Keller, Arianna Huffington’s blog sprawl was reborn under AOL as a media company with the high salaries, cushy benefits and upward mobility to attract Times talent like Lisa Belkin, Peter S. Goodman, Tim O’Brien, Tom Zeller and, briefly, Maura Egan, as WWD reported.
But this week, put one up on the board for The New York Times.
The Times’ DealBook, edited by the poachable Andrew Ross Sorkin, has poached William Alden from The Huffington Post Business vertical, the Observer has learned.
Mr. Alden (Yale ’10, NYO intern ’10) has been working at the Huffington Post for a little over a year, writing about mortgage and banking crises, as well as municipal debt.
He was overseen by a former Timesman, Mr. Goodman, a member of the Times‘ financial crisis Pulitzer team who was recently accused of “scoffing” at the Times from his HuffPo perch. (Mr. Keller was then accused of twisting Mr. Goodman’s words.)
That Mr. Alden was spotted at The Huffington Post suggests it’s a more formidable news competitor than The Times likes to admit. But then, as Times public editor Arthur Brisbane pointed out, it’s just DealBook–that’s not really the Times.
