In fact, it may be argued that the merger only further legitimized an orientation toward news that is both commercialized and populist in its intent. To the point, from Huffington's own perspective, the merger has imposed a demand for effective balance between the types of stories and headlines that drive traffic and those that are necessitated by their importance. According to Bercovici (2012), since its merger with AOL, Huffington Post has worked hard to remain firmly entrenched in both the worlds of news and entertainment. In interview, Huffington would tell Bercovici that "We're selecting the stories because we think they're important but we found a very engaged readership for them. We've seen enormous page views around some of our best feature work." (Bercovici, p. 1)

This unabashed prioritization of traffic-generation and profitability would not just make Huffington a suitable partner for the AOL media giant. It would actually create a scenario in which the Huffington Post and its iconic CEO could proceed with relative authority and dominance in the relationship, a positive development given its successful modeling of commentary-driven mass communication. Huffington Post would effectively pioneer a newly multidirectional discourse on current events on a commercially legitimized forum. At present, a year removed from the merger, recent renegotiations of terms have demonstrated the shared disposition within the two partnered entities that Arianna Huffington is herself best suited to administrate the continued progress of the Post. This speaks to perhaps the greatest triumph on the part of Huffington within the context of this partnering. That is, recent developments have reaffirmed and even extending Huffington's authority...

According to Stelter (2012), a recent revamping, Huffington said, "is intended to help the Huffington Post 'maintain the innovative spirit of a start-up.' Technology, business development, marketing and communications units that were woven into AOL last year will begin to report to her. The advertising sales unit will remain inside AOL 'at the moment,' she said." (Stelter, p. 1)
This denotes that the Huffington Post will now benefit from some administrative authority over the considerable resources at AOL's disposal but that this benefit will not come with a sacrifice of content orientation, mission or a mass communication philosophy distinguished by user interactivity. This returns us to the initial assertion that Huffington and AOL may well be perfect bedfellows, with the former already demonstrating a balance between news and entertainment that carries considerable media value and with the latter standing to benefit considerably from its connection with a site of such tremendous currency and cultural preeminence.

Ultimately, this merger must be regarded as a triumph for mass communications, pairing an organization that helped to lay the groundwork for future internet usage with one that stands to define the way that we use the web today. In their partnership is a great opportunity to capitalize on a model that very much defines content and traffic generation today.

Works Cited:

Bercovici, J. (2012). Arianna Huffington and Tim O'Brien on HuffPost's Pulitzer Win. Forbes.

Snow, N. (2011). Citizen Arianna: The Huffington Post / AOL Merger: Triumph or Tragedy. Nimble Books.

Stelter, B. (2012). Huffington Gains More Control in AOL Revamping. The…