If the ship (or at least the captain of the ship) is going down, if founder Michael Arrington is really fired from AOL, then why is "his" (technically: Arianna Huffington's) site TechCrunch still publishing? The first thing you do when the corporate overlords freak out on your publication is conduct a work stoppage. The conclusion you would draw is: that's a lot of people who could lose their jobs, and they don't feel like Arrington could protect them. (He couldn't, likely. They work for AOL.) So apparently the demands made by Arrington—essentially, "sell me back my site or let me do whatever I want"—are not being met. (Did anyone not see this coming?) The best part of this is that no one can back down from any of their positions. Can you smell all the lawyers at work now??

I left the corporate world in 2008 to write about music and entertainment because I wanted to work from bed, only leaving to maybe smoke joints with Kid Cudi while asking him pretentious questions about string arrangements. I don’t ask for much! During this time, my main gig has been permalancing for AOL Music. There, I aggregated content about hip-hop and indie rock, with a stray shot at actual journalism—attempts which were usually trumped by stories about Rihanna deboarding a plane or Jay-Z making funny faces at Madison Square Garden. READ MORE

Here is a rather incredible follow-up story, from AOL's Moviefone, about their request of Techcrunch to make a story more friendly. It's bizarre! (The request from Moviefone went like this: "Let me know if you’re able to take another look at it and make any edits.") READ MORE

This is terrific. It warms my heart! TechCrunch just took a big chomp out of the suits who asked them to "tone down" their coverage. They'd interviewed the makers of The Source Code, and then actually rather insightfully written about how the film was "trying to target" techies and the tech press. But the AOL Moviefone people who'd set up the interview were not happy and came crying to Techcrunch—which is, still fairly newly, owned by AOL—who then promptly told them to f off: "What I didn’t understand when writing my candid opinion about the movie and its marketing strategy was that Summit thought that by inviting me to their party they were basically buying a puff piece." Oh yes! Welcome to the dark world of entertainment coverage. You think tech or politics is bad, you ain't seen nothing.

For those of you who don't, somehow, do your private banking with Goldman Sachs, you won't see their just-issued report on the AOL purchase of the Huffington Post. For starters, they expect "retention compensation" to offset the Huffington Post's earnings—that the introduction of the Huffington Post will have no impact whatsoever on AOL's projected 2011 earnings. Although: "We view this acquisition as further solidifying AOL’s stance as an owner of valuable focused content channels, similar to cable networks...." Here comes the bonus: trashing Yahoo! "We consider this acquisition strategically valuable from the perspective of (1) brand building; (2) mobile distribution; and (3) differentiated content as it distinguishes AOL’s focused approach from Yahoo!’s 'everything to all people' strategy." Yow! GS remains neutral on AOL. (Also the company "expects to receive or intends to seek compensation for investment banking services in the next 3 months" from AOL.)

AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post for $315 million is fascinating. It comes directly on the heels, for one thing, of a Goldman Sachs assessment issued last week, with a "neutral" rating and the headline "still waiting for the promised turnaround." (It notes that AOL's ad revenue was down 27% and 29% from the previous year in quarters three and four.) You spoke a little soon, Goldman Sachs! Now AOL has inventory to sell! And HuffPo has content from elsewhere to suck in to sell against! What a morning—Arianna Huffington and AOL honcho Tim Armstrong are touching each other! AOL's publicist and Arianna's publicist are integrating! Let's look deeper!

Business
First, the money! Huffpo took in $30 million in 2010, give or take, with 203 employees. They expect to make $60 million in 2011. (Outside investment in the company to date has been $37 million.) Meanwhile? AOL's local news network-thing, Patch, is going to cost AOL $160 million in 2011.

For comparison to some other media organizations?

What's rather shocking is that the New York Times said of this purchase that AOL is "betting on news." Why an actual news-gathering organization thinks that is bizarre. They have confused content with news.

Editorial
Arianna Huffington: editor in chief! She is supposedly "moving to New York," and will be the honcho of the "Huffington News Group." This, among other things, makes her the boss of Michael Arrington at Techcrunch and Joshua FruhlingerTopolsky [Ed Note: LOL! Crazy morning, crazy name substitution!] at Engadget—as well as of Black Voices, Mapquest and Moviephone!

Right? It's a rich new world for intrepid media reporters.

Context
The second big media merger in recent months, after the wild mating of The Daily Beast with Newsweek, this precedes an expected and very strange forthcoming merger, we hear rumors, between one long-time (and long-suffering) large website with an unlikely new owner. This unbridled content-world mergermania will most likely strengthen the new companies—except in the cases where one party becomes a giant stone around another's neck. (A potential outcome for The Daily Beast with Newsweek, sure! Far less so than for HuffOL. AOLHuff. I don't know—please work on that.) On a smaller level, one that we care about: all these mergers will most likely put a fair number of people out of work. Oh well, brave new world.

That is a true thing.

We'll give our own publisher the last word.