Stepping up its ongoing efforts to regain relevance in a post-dialup world, AOL will acquire Huffington Post for $315 million. As part of the deal, Arianna Huffington will become Editor-in-Chief for all properties of AOL's rapidly expanding content empire, including the increasingly ubiquitous Patch.com hyperlocal news network. Top sites that will be added to Huffington's editorial domain include TechCrunch, Mapquest, Moviefone and the surviving blogs of the Weblogs, Inc. network (including Endgadget, TV Squad, PopEater and Joystiq), acquired by AOL/Time Warner in 2005. Will the internet never be the same again? more ›

LATimes.com is well aware of the conflicts that come with contextual advertising -- no ad box appears alongside search results for terms such as "porn" or "sex," for example. But, for now at least, "freaky big, cartoon like muscles" are only a click away. more ›

The LA County Board of Supervisors and the City Council are set to vote today on a "Lights Out Los Angeles" proposal, which would encourage all city employees to "voluntarily turn off all non-essential lights between 8 and 9 p.m. on Oct. 20, replace at least one incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb and pledge their participation on www.lightsoffla.org." Mirthala Salinas didn't show up to work today at her new gig... more ›

To some, Elvira Arellano is a leader among pro-immigration rights activists who think the federal government' immigration and trade policies are unfair. To others, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Arellano is just another attention-grabbing, "criminal alien and immigration fugitive," unfairly using her American-born son as an Elián González-like prop for pro immigration activism . Arellano spent an entire year inside Adalberto United Methodist Church on Chicago's West Side, defying a federal order to report... more ›

The inaugural EconSM conference, produced by Rafat Ali's ContentNext Media Network (parent of the excellent PaidContent site) is rockin' the Beverly Hilton with entertainment and new media heavies. EconSM addresses the present and potential economy of the social media marketplace in regards to online news, Hollywood, music, mobile media, and more. The amusing "Social Media Meets Hollywood" panel, in which Carson Daly sat alongside The L Word executive producer Ilene Chaiken, preceded lunch. Daly... more ›

Today we interviewed a top online news editor and wanted to share the goods. This interview was conducted by LAist during the Knight New Media Centers Politics and Cyberspace conference. Does anyone really still call it "cyberspace?" Dave Herman is the daily editor of the MSN.com homepage. We discussed the hits and misses on the evil empire's Redmond, WA-based portal, including the Janet nip-slip and the Virginia Tech massacre, before we were rudely cut off...... more ›

No piece of video can capture the Mars Volta. No photo graph or online news source or audio tape or mp3 could properly convey each squeal and beat and diversity of sounds that come at you at a Mars Volta show. At first we were all, "wtf why are they playing at a place with seats?", but then we went and were like, "if people are just going to watch with their mouths wide open, why bother standing, just sit." more ›

David Hiller may be the most pessimistic man in the newspaper business. The Tribune Company exec who took over as publisher of the Times when Jeff Johnson was forced out for refusing to roll heads down Spring Street, appears neither ambitious, nor comfortable. His rambling rhetoric (listen below) largely expressed that he "just doesn't get it" and that even he can't wait to get his butt kicked back to Chi-town after the TribCo pinches itself... more ›