Great white sharks off L.A. beaches? Yup. Now they're on TV

White sharks at one of Los Angeles’ most popular surfing beaches? Yes.

They’ve become such a familiar site at Sunset Beach in Pacific Palisades that regulars have become almost, kind of, sort of comfortable with their presence. Sometimes the humans don't even tell lifeguards or researchers about seeing the predators.

That’s one of the revelations of “Great White Invasion,” one of several new programs debuting this week on the Discovery channel’s 24th annual “Shark Week.” The television event has been a hit for Discovery since it debuted in the 1980s, routinely attracting 20 million viewers a year. "Shark Week" topped more than 30 million viewers in 2010.

“Great White Invasion” describes how sightings of great whites have multiplied in recent years at Sunset—the surf break near where Sunset Boulevard empties on to Pacific Coast Highway—and at other beaches around the world.

The shark appearances here gained particular notoriety in 2009, when surf shop owner Randy Wright captured photos and video of the creatures jumping out of the water. The “breaching” photos--sizable sharks soaring out of the water--became a sensation on the Web.

The producers of “Great White Invasion” tried to secure some of Wright’s video, but the videographer had his own ideas for disseminating the information, though where it will be shown is not yet clear. Among the footage: shots of a shark perhaps 10 feet long jumping clear of the ocean's surface, video that a prominent shark researcher called “phenomenal."

Unable to secure Wright’s video, the “Great White Invasion” creators made due with interviews with  Sunset surfers about their shark encounters. They paired the Los Angeles segments with dramatic footage from white shark breaches in other locales, like Australia and South Africa.

Ralph Collier, the veteran researcher who founded and runs the San Fernando Valley-based Shark Research Committee, said he thinks “Great White Invasion” gives a fair account of white shark episodes locally. Collier appears in the documentary and comments on the recent proliferation of white shark sitings.

 “There has not been one surfer who was bitten or bumped or harassed at Sunset,” Collier said in an interview with the Big Picture. “There have been numerous reports of sharks coming up, usually on the starboard side of a surfer and rotating and then looking them over, before leveling out and swimming away. We are not really anything of special interest to sharks.”

The reasons for infrequent shark attacks on humans in Southern California are not entirely understood, Collier said. A teenage body-boarder was killed off Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, last fall. A veterinarian died while on a training swim off Solana Beach in the spring of 2008.

With millions of people entering the water, there have been only a handful of other fatalities in Southern California in the last half-century. Collier said there are some common sense precautions to be taken by those who enter the shark’s domain. Swimmers and surfers should avoid the ocean when marine mammals or a lot of bait fish are nearby. They should not wear flashy jewelry, swim suits or even nail polish that might attract a shark’s attention, Collier said. Though it’s not understood exactly what color range white sharks can see, better to go low-key.

“Great White Invasion" replays frequently this week, along with a host of other shark-umentaries. One other Discovery offering features "Chief Shark Officer" Andy Samberg, celebrity host for the  week's offerings. The "Saturday Night Live" comedian takes a look, and gets really scared, about sharks off the Bahamas.

ALSO:

Andy Samberg of 'Saturday Night Live' named Discovery Channel's Shark Week host

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: White sharks star in the Discovery channel program "Great White Invasion." Surfers in Los Angeles talk about seeing the predators off Sunset Beach. There have been no attacks on humans at the popular surf spot. Credit: C & M Fallows / oceanwideimages.com

Juan Williams: Muzzled, but still talking all the time

Among the striking non sequiturs in Juan Williams' new book "Muzzled," besides the title, is the author's simultaneous embrace of Fox News and despair at what he says is a national discourse that has become overly ideological and coarse.

Those two ideas may coexist in the nearly 300 pages of Williams' book, but they will ring jarringly dissonant to anyone who has spent more than a few minutes watching Fox hosts batter anyone with an opposing (read: liberal) position.

Fox is the leading practitioner of the full-contact partisan commentary that's spreading across cable television (most notably to MSNBC) and, arguably, to the body politic. Williams won a $2-million contract with Fox over three years after being booted from NPR last fall.

He charges it is the public radio network that is a safe haven for liberal political cant.

I have a longer discussion of the Williams book in my On the Media column, but there wasn't room to mention all the disconnects there. One other misnomer from the onetime Washington Post journalist: In a section of "Muzzled" in which he discusses how much the public liked his work at National Public Radio, Williams notes that the "ombudswoman said she got more response to my work than to any other voice on the network." What he fails to write is that much of that public feedback was negative--complaints about Williams' screeds on Fox.

The book and the discussion accompanying it raise many questions. One for NPR: If Williams was as ineffectual and overly opinionated as you suggest, why did you keep him around for a decade? Perhaps it had something to do with the star status he had achieved in part, ahem, by appearing on Fox. For Williams: If NPR was as corrupt and politically correct as you now report, why didn't you quit before they fired you?

I tried to get Williams through a couple of Fox representatives this week. They did not respond to my inquiries.

--James Rainey

Photo: News analyst Juan Williams is now a commentator at Fox News, full time, after being ousted from his job at National Public Radio last fall. His new book, "Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate," discusses the controversy and his thoughts on runaway political correctness. Credit: Richard Drew / AP

 

 

Weiner Twitter-pic story just won't go away

Rep. Anthony Weiner's television appearances Wednesday confirmed what you might have suspected: Congressmen don't win when they have to discuss crotch shots.

Right-wing commentator Andrew Breitbart  began pushing the story over the weekend that a photo showing a man's crotch in snug underwear had been posted from the congressman's Twitter account.

Those initial reports suggested that the  provocative photo had been sent in a direct Twitter communication (not visible to other Twitter users) to a young woman in Seattle. The woman denied receiving any photo. The New York Democrat said he had never sent such a picture, or ever met the woman in question.

She agreed that she had never met Weiner, though she acknowledged calling the lawmaker her "boyfriend" on the social network. She explained this as a fangirl gesture, delivered from a distance,  rather than evidence the two had any sort of real relationship.

Weiner got so agitated about being asked about all of this on Tuesday he called CNN's Ted Barrett a "jackass" during a confrontation on Capitol Hill. The lawmaker later said he lashed out because the reporter was interrupting him.

Weiner acknowledged that wasn't such a great performance and that he needed to do more to clear the air. So he was back on cable TV Wednesday, this time granting interviews to Luke Russert of MSNBC and Wolf Blitzer of CNN.

Weiner was calmer in those interviews than he had been a day earlier. He insisted he had never sent the picture in question to the Seattleite. But he also said he could not say for sure that the picture was not of him.

“It certainly doesn’t look familiar to me," Weiner told Blitzer. "But I don’t want to say with certitude to you something that I don’t know to be the certain truth.” Hmmm. Not exactly conclusive. And things got a little bumpier and more halting as the congressman tried to explain whether he had ever taken such a picture of himself.

“I can tell you this, that there are, I have photographs, I don’t know what photographs are out there in the world of me," Weiner said. "I don’t know what things have been manipulated and doctored. Um, and we’re going to try to find out what happened.”

Weiner declined to answer when pressed by Blitzer as to whether he had ever communicated by direct message with the Seattle woman. “Look, I am not going to get into how I communicate with people on social media," he said.

Asked to explain why he would have received another message, this one allegedly from a stripper, Weiner suggested his Twitter account might have issued a "pro forma" response, like ones that would have gone to others of the roughly 45,000 people who follow his 140-character missives. Weiner keeps up a lively, sometimes combative narrative on Twitter, making him one of the most popular lawmakers on the social media site.

Weiner, 46, tried a lot of angles to make the mess go away Wednesday. There was humor: “It seems like a prank to make fun of my name. When your name is Weiner that certainly happens a lot.” There was empathy: "I would just hope you would leave these people alone," he said of his Twitter followers. "They didn’t do anything wrong for following me.” There was the commonweal: "I want to talk about the debt limit and health care reform."

Weiner married former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin last summer, in a ceremony officiated by Bill Clinton. When Blitzer asked if his responses were designed to protect someone, Weiner replied, "Yes, I am protecting my wife."

The congressman said the pursuit of rumors in the story had gotten so silly that a blog's list of attractive women he followed on Twitter included his sister-in-law. But the furor seemed unlikely to conclude at least for a few more days. Those who wanted to keep it alive looked for a bigger public policy issue: If a congressman's social media account had been hacked, wasn't this a potential security threat to all of Congress? And shouldn't an investigation take place, to make sure the lawmakers could keep their online accounts secure?

Others were questioning Weiner's tactics in trying to blunt the questions. "Anthony Weiner's non-denial denial about the pic sure undermines his defense," said Daily Beast media and political writer Howard Kurtz on, yes, Twitter, "and casts doubt on hacking tale. Why'd he wait almost a week?"

On CNN, commentator Gloria Borger talked about the advantages and pitfalls of interacting with constituents on social media sites. “It establishes this sense of intimacy," Borger said, "and that can be good and sometimes it can be really bad."

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) as he met with reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday to dicuss a photo from his Twitter account. The lewd picture was a close-up of a man in tight underwear. Weiner denied that he sent the photo via social media, but he said he couldn't be certain it was not of him. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

 

 

 

 

Schwarzenegger child: How Gawker named wrong 'baby mama'

The story of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the household worker who bore his child more than a decade ago has created something like the Fog of War, I suggested the other day.  When fact, fiction and journalistic standards blur, you’ve gotten lost in what might be called the Fog of Celebrity.

In a week in which TV stations and other news outlets tripped over themselves to chase the story, frequently looking a bit foolish, the gossip website Gawker stood out. The website helped expand the noxious cloud with a story that combined extra-thin reporting and mistaken assumptions, leading to the misidentification (though with great bravado) of Schwarzenegger’s supposed mistress and "love child."

Reporter John Cook made the faulty identification in a post that also included photos of the  purported mistress and supposed out-of-wedlock child. The basic problem (though there were many others) was that the individuals named by Gawker bore no meaningful resemblance, literal or figurative, to the illicit partner and child Schwarzenegger acknowledged Monday to the Los Angeles Times.

I emailed Cook Thursday about his foul-up and he told me Gawker would pull down the post and issue a “statement.” The statement followed, actually under a heading called “CORRECTIONS.” It was headlined “Arnold Schwarzenegger's Love Child: A Retraction.”

“I'll just say I whiffed and I'm obviously quite embarrassed about it and wish we hadn't published the story the way we did,” Cook said in his email to me. He went on to acknowledge that he had relied on an almost eight-year-old story in Britain’s Daily Mail, which identified a woman who purportedly had a child with the one-time movie star.

The woman denied it back then, as Schwarzenegger attempted to replace Gray Davis in the recall election for governor of California. She said she had taken a paternity test that proved the child was her husband's.

Reporter Cook used what he called “circumstantial evidence—as well as common sense” to reach the conclusion that the long-ago Daily Mail report was about the same woman who became the center of this week’s furor. That “common sense” included assuming that the flight attendant Cook identified as the other woman was one and the same as the mistress described in The Times as a “longtime member” of Schwarzenegger's “household staff.”

Cook said via his email that he thought a “personal stewardess ... conceivably fits under the rubric ‘household staff’ in the same way a chauffeur would.” I don’t recall seeing in those aerial photos over Brentwood that—despite its massive size—the Governator’s mansion includes a landing strip. But I digress.

The shoddy reporting didn’t end there. Cook's story claimed that The Times' report said the love child had "the same distinctive name as one of Schwarzenegger’s film characters.” It added, parenthetically: “That detail has apparently been scrubbed from the current version online.”

Only problem: None of that was in The Times' story. Ever. Times lead reporter Mark Z. Barabak purposefully never named the mistress or child, in a bid to protect their privacy. In a follow-up email, I asked Gawker’s Cook to explain how he conjured up that one. But he said his bosses had told him not to get in a back-and-forth and to let his original response to me stand.

It appears Cook was unsure about the juicy Schwarzenegger-named-his-illegitimate-child-for-a-film-character angle even before he posted it. In an email to Barabak, before the posting, Cook wrote: “Am I crazy, or did an early version of your Schwarzenegger story say that the child shared a distinctive name with a character that Schwarzenegger once played in a movie? Did you report that? Was it taken out? Or did I see it somewhere else?”

Cook did post an UPDATE acknowledging that he got that one wrong.

The woman Gawker pointed to in its reporting was investigated by a number of news organizations, including The Times, back in 2003. The paper reported back then how Schwarzenegger had groped and humiliated more than a dozen women during the time he was one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. But The Times ran nothing about the case of the flight attendant because the paper couldn't corroborate that she had an affair, or child, with Schwarzenegger. (Cook said The Times "sat" on the story. Again, wrong.)

Gawker has gained a large following for its scorched-earth pop culture missives, heavy on snark and contempt for many figures in the public eye. I will not deny that the site can be a fun read, though not exactly the place to look for balance or fairness.

I asked Gawker Editor-in-Chief Remy Stern how the error came about.  Stern said the reporter is one of “the very best.” He called the Schwarzenegger story an anomaly.

“I discussed the story with John and reviewed the piece before it was published,” Stern wrote in an email, “so ultimately I bear responsibility for the error. The punishment for John and me is a little wounded pride this weekend.”

Gawker celebrated Cook last year when he made a brief exit for a job at Yahoo! The site praised his  “posts [that] were compelling and thoughtful,” adding: “He's an almost too-smart guy who isn't willing to go for the shallow dive on anything.”

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Maria Shriver appeared with Oprah Winfrey as the talk show doyenne recorded her farewell special. Shriver recently separated from husband Arnold Schwarzenegger after learning he fathered a child with a woman who worked for many years in the couple's Brentwood home. Credit: Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press

 

Schwarzenegger mistress not named here, a rarity in media

Usually news outlets are noticeable for what they report. Less often, they stand out for what they don't.

That has been the case this week as the Los Angeles Times has held back the name of the child that former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered with a woman who worked for years in his Brentwood home.

Times political reporter Mark Z. Barabak broke the big story (along with reporter Victoria Kim) at about midnight Monday on this website. It appeared in Tuesday's print edition of the paper, setting off a furor that has swept across other newspapers, television, radio and the Internet. Virtually every news organization I could find has named the one-time Schwarzenegger employee and provided other details about the politician-movie star's secret child.

The Times has not only declined to name the woman, but is also not disclosing the name, age or sex of her child.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Times Editor Russ Stanton gave me a statement explaining why the Times didn't publish the name.

"The public has a legitimate interest in the behavior of someone who held high office in this state and is likely to remain prominent for a long time," Stanton said. "Schwarzenegger’s conduct is what was newsworthy.

"In some circumstances, it might be necessary or appropriate to reveal the identity of a politician’s mistress," he continued. "In this situation, we thought it was not. We hewed to the principle of protecting the identity of an innocent child.

"To have identified the mother would, in effect, have been to identify the child. Different media companies have different standards. We will stick by ours, regardless of what others do."

By 3:45 a.m. Tuesday morning, the celebrity website TMZ was on the story. Later in the day, it identified the mistress and began running pictures of the child, with the face obscured. From pictures Wednesday of television news crews swarming around the woman's home in Bakersfield, it was clear the Times' position was not shared by a lot of others.

ABC flashed a picture of the woman on the morning news. TMZ had a veritable album of photos, including one in which the young child's face could be seen. The New York Times named the woman, described the "quiet cul-de-sac" where she lives and provided other details of her life, though the paper did not name her child.

(An Associated Press account I read also did not give the woman's name, although it described the media mob scene around her home and interviewed neighbors--and named the family dog.)

New York Times Editor Bill Keller emailed his thoughts on identifying the mistress. "Our basic job is to inform readers about news events, so we need a pretty compelling reason NOT to give readers information we think they care about," Keller wrote, in part. "We're sensitive to privacy issues, but in this case we don't see that compelling reason to keep our readers in the dark."

Keller added: "Often — as in the Schwarzenegger case — we withhold the names of children, because they are particularly vulnerable....

"The employee who had Schwarzenegger's child is a more complicated question. We don't know enough about the circumstances to know whether, or in what degree, she was a victim, beyond the obvious fact that there was a serious imbalance of power in the relationship.

"But there's nothing to suggest that reliving the earlier experience is likely to be traumatizing in the sense rape victims describe (she's lived with it — and worked for him -- for 10 or 15 years). And the reality is, there is not much privacy left for us to protect."

Even the smarmier corners of the Web seemed to be withholding the child's name. Though that did not mean it couldn't be found.

A news assignment manager at television's NBC4 in Los Angeles issued a Twitter message Wednesday listing the name and purported age. It appears that the NBC employee, David Reese, got the age wrong.

When I asked him if he would put the information about the child on the air, the response suggested Reese had suffered an instance of Itchy-Twitterfinger Syndrome.

His Twitter message to me about the use of the child's name: "We're not putting it out at all ... I should not have tweeted it."

They talk about the Fog of War. There's also something like the Fog of Celebrity. In the rush to get some part of the story of the moment, proportion and judgment can fly out the window.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted that he had an affair with a former household employee, an affair that produced a child. The L.A. Times, which broke the story, has not identified the child but many other news outlets have. Credit: Matt Sayles/ Associated Press

 

 

NPR video: So grainy, jumpy and heavily edited it must be true

A lot has been written about how selective editing of a secret video helped maximize the damage to NPR and its chief fundraiser, Ron Schiller, who resigned last week after sharply criticizing conservatives.

A full viewing of the uncut video showed that Schiller said plenty of mitigating things: He was once a Republican himself, for instance, and admired the party’s fiscal restraint. He also repeatedly declined to be drawn in by the video makers' provocations that, for example, conservatives should be banned from the public radio network.

The discrepancies between the full and edited videos only came to light after Schiller had been forced out. NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller quickly followed him out the door, with the network under considerable stress as Congress considers killing its federal funding.

So why did tricked-out video—much like the secret audio of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker talking to a fake supporter—pack such a wallop?

Kevin Maness, assistant professor of communication studies at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, said the crude, homemade quality of secret "sting" videos enhances their currency with the general public.

“When a media outlet plays audio so bad that it needs subtitles or grainy video at strange angles, I would speculate that this carries a considerable amount of authority—not to mention emotional impact—for viewers,” Maness wrote me in an e-mail. “To me, the bad production quality says that this is super-secret stuff that could never have been learned through conventional means.”

Maness said guerrilla video/audio work for media outlets because they carry the patina of authenticity and authority. (What feels more real than direct recordings?) Television, radio and Web outlets can simply replay the recordings and seek out reaction and, voila, a provocative story is born.

Once the video and audio have been picked up by mainstream news outlets, the authenticity of the recordings only expands. “Now I may convince even a moderately skeptical person that my campaign is based on ‘fact,’ " Maness said.

The video stings jump into our consciousness much like a Hollywood blockbuster, Maness argues. Even critically reviled stinkers can make big money and get some traction on opening weekend, before anyone starts talking about the films' quality.

“If and when there's any follow-up, it will invariably be less splashy than the original story,” Maness said. And some media will be particularly loath to revisit the matter, if follow-up will make it clear that the recordings didn't get enough scrutiny before their initial airing.

Maness said the press should have learned by now to treat such videos gingerly. And the targets of the stings should pause before jumping too hastily into corrective action that may not be necessary.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: James O'Keefe, whose Project Veritas arranged the secret video recording of NPR fundraising chief Ron Schiller. Schiller resigned after the video showed him criticizing some Republicans. Credit: Bill Haber / Associated Press

 

 

Anonymous Internet trolls don't have much to fear

Video of KCBS reporter Serene Branson speaking incoherently on Grammy night became a YouTube sensation.

For most people, the scary incident (later revealed to be triggered by Branson's migraine symptoms) provoked sympathy. That doesn't include the trolls who skulk about the Internet, waiting for the next opportunity to put their stupidity and callousness on display.

My “On the Media” column Saturday is devoted to how The Times and other news organizations are trying to minimize such drivel. They hope to improve the quality of discourse, so real conversation can flow.

That's not what happened after the Branson episode last week, which provoked a lot of lame chatter and a post on latimes.com by one dimwit who had to call Branson a “party bimbo.” This charming reader further smeared the newswoman with a few other unsubstantiated claims--not worth repeating here. (Times editors quickly removed the offensive post.)

A lot of readers probably have wondered how people can get away with making statements that can be proved demonstrably false. And what about news sites: Don't they have some liability when they provide a forum where others are defamed?

People who post untrue and damaging e-mail can be held liable. But the law protects news outlets that provide the platform. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, news outlets are not legally responsible for third-party postings that might be libelous or invade someone’s privacy, said media attorney Kelli Sager, who sometimes represents The Times.

Most  of the noxious postings, like the one in the Branson story, probably go unnoticed by their targets. And, even when public figures become aware of the smears, most probably want to move on rather than get bogged down in legal action.

The absence of serious consequences, combined with the anonymity allowed on most websites, creates a fertile feeding ground for unscrupulous Internet trolls.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: KCBS reporter Serene Branson gained nationwide celebrity when she began to babble incoherently during a live report on the night of the Grammy Awards. Following numerous tests, her doctors diagnosed a "complex migraine." Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Groupon explains Super Bowl ad misfires, tries to make good

Groupon, the group discount website, found itself in the unenviable position of Monday morning quarterbacking--trying to explain, one day later, how its Super Bowl ads misfired so badly.

Groupon founder Andrew Mason explained in a post on the website Monday afternoon that the online coupon company had meant to poke fun at itself and at "shameless self promotion" in most ads, not at the downtrodden Tibetan people, threatened Brazilian rain forests or endangered whales.

Many viewers thought the irony misfired and, instead, seemed to make light of causes like freedom for Tibet and the rain forests in Brazil. Several critics rated the ads--in which spokesman quickly jumped from a sociopolitical issue to a bargain available from Groupon--as the worst to air during Sunday's big game.

Mason said in his post that his company's intention had been to raise awareness for Groupon and for the causes, in hopes that people would contribute. "That’s why organizations like Greenpeace, BuildOn, the Tibet Fund and the Rainforest Action Network all decided to throw their support behind the campaign (read Greenpeace’s blog post here)," he wrote.

In fact, the nonprofit organizations approved the scripts for the spots in advance, though they did not see the final editing cuts because of the need to make the deadline for broadcast, a Groupon spokeswoman told the Big Picture.

Groupon's three ads featured celebrity spokespeople--actor Tim Hutton, model Elizabeth Hurley and actor Cuba Gooding Jr.--telling the stories, respectively of Tibet, Brazilian forests and whaling. Mid-ad the celebs then turned to pitches for the online coupon service--noting you could get a big break at a Himalayan restaurant in Chicago, a New York salon offering Brazilian bikini wax and on whale tours.

At that point, particularly in the Tibet ad, you could almost hear the needle screeching across the vinyl album. Non sequitur alert! 

"Our ads highlight the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when juxtaposed against bigger world issues, making fun of Groupon," Mason wrote, by way of explanation. "Why make fun of ourselves? Because it’s different -– ads are traditionally about shameless self promotion, and we’ve always strived to have a more honest and respectful conversation with our customers."

When you have to explain a joke that costs you millions to produce, you know something went terribly wrong. The pivot from altruism to commercialism seemed earnest or awkward, at best. It failed to take clear enough aim at crass commercialism.

Mason used his message Monday to try to return the focus to the charitable organizations Groupon said it set out to help. "To that point, if the ads affected you, we hope you’ll head over to SaveTheMoney.org and make a donation (which we’ll match)," Mason wrote, "we’re hoping to raise a lot of money."

He concluded with this: "The last thing we wanted was to offend our customers -– it’s bad business and it’s not where our hearts are."

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

 

Huffington Post-AOL, a marriage made in SEOland

Arianna Huffington remade the media landscape this morning when she became content leader for AOL, which purchased her 5-year-old Huffington Post website for $315 million.

That may have been the top news story at Huffington Post. But the other headlines attracting bundles of clicks there Monday were: “Kim Kardashian Loves 'W Magazine' Nude Photos,”  “Christina Aguilera Totally Messes Up National Anthem” and “Jennifer Aniston Wears Bra Vibrator on 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show.' "

Those who know Huffington mostly from television will focus on her liberal politics, support of health care reform and opposition to America’s two wars. Conservative opinion makers quickly slammed AOL, saying its credibility as a news source would slip away thanks to its union with Huffington.

But as the previous headlines demonstrated, government and politics take a backseat at Huffington Post to the real traffic drivers -- features, celebrities, gossip and other "verticals" that are pieced together and presented with brilliant aggregation and search engine optimization (SEO).

As pioneering blogger and web designer Jason Kottke tweeted, "HuffPo sold to AOL for $315 million. Is that the biggest exit ever for an SEO company?"

Others who work in the online news and information space agreed that what AOL got, at a high premium, was an operation brilliant at creating a water hole and drawing the animals in to drink.

Huffington Post has led most other sites by smoothly incorporating social media so that friends can use Facebook and Twitter to find out what friends are reading. It’s not uncommon to find stories replayed on HuffPo getting far more traffic than they did at the originating site, though links connect back to the source.

“I watch the way they put it together and they are just way ahead of the pack,” said an executive at another Web operator, who asked not to be named because his owners prohibit talking about rivals.

It’s not uncommon for posts to draw thousands of comments. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s withering takedown of Sarah Palin (who he dubbed a “phony pioneer girl”) and her TV hunting expedition lured in more than 700,000 readers, was "liked" more than 100,000 times on Facebook and drew 7,800 comments.

Other sites only dream about that kind of traffic. And much of the content comes from friends of Arianna. Like Sorkin, they don’t get paid.

The charming HuffPost doyenne is herself one of the most valuable assets AOL has acquired. At every one of her myriad media appearances, she’ll now be introduced as the guru of content for AOL and all its sites — which include TechCrunch, Engadget and many others.

That sort of buzz and relevance has escaped AOL in recent years. It will be invaluable to an operation that thrived in what now seems like a long-ago time — when most computer users relied on dial-up connection for Internet access.

But what about making money?

Huffington has made only a little so far. Her operation has mostly been propped up by venture capital. It reportedly brought in $30 million in revenue in 2010, breaking into profitability for the first time. In its announcement Monday, the company said it hopes to increase that to $50 million this year and to lure more premium advertising as the AOL-Huffington Post combo expects to attract 117 million unique visitors a month.

That may all happen. But there are many skeptics. Among the questions: Can Huffington, known as a storyteller and promotional whiz, manage a complicated business amalgam? Some of those who have worked for her question her organizational abilities.

Do ad “synergies” really emerge, or is this just another Web deal that is not greater than the sum of its parts? Steve Case, the former AOL chief executive involved in the famously unsuccessful merger with Time Warner, was among the immediate skeptics of the new deal.

 "Tim Armstrong says 1 + 1 will equal 11. Really? That wasn't my experience," Case tweeted.

-- James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: The Huffington Post website draws a lot of traffic with celebrity titillation, such as a headline about nude photos of the pictured Kim Kardashian. AOL bought the website for $315 million, hoping to benefit from its aggregation and search engine optimization. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

Joe Frank, public radio icon, might chuck the $8 cane

I had lost track of Joe Frank, the groundbreaking storyteller who created dozens of riveting radio dramas for KCRW-FM (89.9) in the 1980s and '90s. That changed when I got an invitation from the station to see Frank perform at the Village, the  legendary West L.A. recording studio.

Although no one announced that the show would be a departure, it was. Never before had the mysterious performer so directly addressed his family life, particularly his relationship with a difficult mother, who died some years ago.

The crowd seemed to lap up the performance, which centered partly on how people disintegrate with age. But when I met him this week, Frank surprised me with his take on the show. He said he had been persuaded by a couple of friends to deal with the more personal material, but he ended up hating the piece.

“In live performance you always make mistakes. What you do is imperfect," he said. "Usually I wear shades and a hat. But that seemed entirely inappropriate given the kind of material I was doing, which was very honest, very open. Which I also hated. What I do is usually surreal.

“I like going further out, expanding the imaginations of people. There are lots of people who tell stories about themselves.”

Although he intends to keep his own story out of future performances, Frank had decided he would share more about himself in our interview, which I also detailed in my On the Media column. He talked at length about his own aging.

“Suddenly I find myself an old man with a cane,” said Frank, 72, who has struggled through a series of illnesses and recently recovered from pneumonia.  “And in my interior life I feel so much younger. There seems to be a real disconnect with this old, deteriorating, decrepit body ... which is carrying my brain and heart around in it.”

Franks said he hates when people defer to him, offering an arm or holding open a door, even if he knows they mean well. His hands shake as a result of medication he takes. The need to hold a glass aloft for a toast at a party, or to eat with people he doesn't know well, can cause a moment of panic.

But then Frank wonders if he simply needs to embrace the changes.

“Maybe I can transcend it by taking advantage of it, by making it into a persona,” he said. He muses about chucking the cane he bought for $8 at CVS. “I could have a cane with a wolf’s head and ruby eyes. I could wear a white suit or some bizarre getup, a hip-hop kind of hat and always a pair of sunglasses. And then instead of me being invisible maybe they would see this old man and I would, as you say, own it.”

In some of his old radio pieces that conveyed a good dose of anxiety and despair, Frank would edit in a teacher speaking about equanimity, a respite from the prevailing darkness. I wondered if he had ever tried meditation, a break from “the monkey mind.”

“I once had a friend come over to my house and urged me to meditate with him,” Frank said. “He kneeled down on the floor of my house and I kneeled down beside him and focused my mind on a word or something. And I was there for maybe 30 seconds when I felt so ridiculous and so stupid and thought it was so absurd that I got up.”

I couldn’t resist: “So you gave him a full 30 seconds?”

“I did,” Frank said, laughing. “I might have even given him a minute or a minute and a half. But certainly not more than that.”

I told Frank he sounded a little like Woody Allen’s character in “Annie Hall.” Alvy Singer memorably celebrated the fact that most people are only “miserable,” knowing they could be among the “horrible,” those who are crippled or dying.

But Frank told me he really does have a little more perspective than that. “I can’t say I am miserable because I have a body of work behind me. I have a considerable following,” he said, adding: “You can’t be unhappy. It’s not fair under these circumstances. So even though I may be depressed a fair amount of the time I am still grateful for what I’ve got.”

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Joe Frank made more than 200 radio dramas over a couple of decades at KCRW-FM. He recently has expanded to Facebook and done a limited number of live performances. Credit: joefrank.com