The Huffington Post has arrived

Well, after a good deal of anticipation, The Huffington Post began yesterday. I just popped over to check it out. In case you haven't already heard, this is a group blog and opinion page, organized by Arianna Huffington.

First off, I think it's an attractive site. It contains a lot of text and a lot of information, but its layout makes it easy to read and navigate. It's divided into two main sections. On the left side of the page are compressed blog entries from the various writers who all have lots of name and face recognition. On the right is a collection of headlines the editors have pulled from various news sources. They link to a brief article description, which then links to the original source allowing room for readers comments.

As for the actual blog, as of this writing there are already 75 blog entries. I read several entries, but with the plethora of authors it is difficult to really hear their "voice. A posting by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall caught my eye because it seemed alarmingly out of place. I had to stop and re-read it to "hear" their sarcasm, which would have been immediately apparent on a blog that allowed a more intimate familiarity with the writers, but perhaps that is already assumed. At the same time I loved seeing the variety in the issues tackled by these celebrities, some of whom I am more familiar with then others. I found most of what they're saying interesting,

The, as they call it, "News Wire" is different. When I viewed it, there seemed to be a lot of headlines about writing, journalism and the media. What I liked about it is that the articles headlines are things they find interesting and noteworthy, pulled out of the mainstream media. Yes, there's a liberal bias, but that's fine with me. However, you don't have people going of on complete leftist tirades either. They aren't pretending to be a news-reporting agency. It's news and opinions all the time. Again I like the variety of their sources. In addition to numerous articles from the AP and the Washington Post, there were articles from foreign publications like Haaretz and Aljazeera, links to Vanity Fair and The Nation, as well as articles exclusive to the Huffington Post and links to other blogs.

All in all, I liked it. Although I wouldn't use it as my exclusive source of news, I have no doubt I'll check in with them from time to time.