Arianna Huffington Offers Apology

Posted on March 18, 2006

Arianna Huffington has posted an apology for not sourcing the controversial George Clooney blog post (more on that post here and here.

I now realize that I made a big mistake in posting a blog without clearly identifying that the material in it didn't originate as a blog post but was pieced together from previous interviews.
I'm sorry I didn't see this earlier. But I see it now and here is what I'm going to do about it:
1. Going forward, any time the HuffPost uses repurposed material we will identify it as such and source where it originally appeared and link to it. (Thank you Jeff Jarvis)
2. Even though the point of providing George Clooney a sample blog was to show how it's done and encourage him to join the blogosphere, I will curb my enthusiasm and not do this in the future.
3. When I read something or hear something in an interview or have something said to me in person that I think is really important and should have as wide an audience as possible, I will put it in my own blog, becoming Boswell to all the Dr. Johnsons out there just as I did once with Arthur Schlesinger.

It is good that Arianna Huffington has thought more about this issue and offered an apology. In addition to sourcing more material it would be nice if the Huffington Post would also link out more. For example, where she thanked Jeff Jarvis she could also have linked to the blog post she was referring to when she said "Thank you Jeff Jarvis."