HuffPost admits fault in row over aggregation

AdAge‘s “Media Guy,” Simon Dumenco, went after HuffPost‘s Arianna Huffington in his column on Monday. His major beef was that HuffPost takes too much content from sites that produce original material. Although HuffPost will link to the original content, it’s already appropriated so much of it, there’s no reason for the reader to click through.

Dumenco points to a particular post about Anthony Weiner and Steve Jobs, which drove a paltry 57 page views to AdAge.com.

HuffPost admitted its mistake. The site’s business editor wrote to Dumenco to say that his criticism is “completely valid” and that the writer of the offending post has been suspended indefinitely.

Yikes.

I’ve been on both sides of this equation—as a blogger who has linked to content and as a reporter whose original work has been slurped up and posted/linked to on other sites.