Andrew Breitbart, a former collaborator on The Drudge Report and founder of the right-leaning Big Hollywood, says that Arianna Huffington will drag AOL to the left politically as its new editor-in-chief, and it will alienate some readers.
Asked if he thought she’d apply her politics to running content at AOL, Breitbart told TheWrap, “I think she will, but I think she’ll tone it down a little. She’ll be a chef, throwing in some items you ordinarily would have expected.”
But he added: “They can tell you it’s not ideological — it is … I think a lot of people will not be happy. I don’t know how many.”
The outspoken blogger, who helped launch The Huffington Post in 2005, said that Huffington would “pirouette” her way around political constraints in driving content at the massive portal.
“This grants her an ability to be 40,000 feet above it, and apply her rolodex and mind to other things,” he observed. “It will clearly lean to the left, because her rolodex is to the left these days.”
Still, Breitbart had mainly praise for Huffington’s monster work ethic and ability to adapt to a new situation at AOL.
On the other hand, he wondered what the strategy was for AOL.
“Unless AOL is trying to assert itself as a progressive corollary to Murdoch’s empire, I don’t understand it,” he said. “If Murdoch is succeeding with the perception of an ideological bent, which includes going beyond politics and news coverage, then Arianna is fashioning herself as a Murdoch of the left.”
He added: “I think Arianna would like to take off the straitjacket of ideological conformity.”
And be a real mogul.
