For $315 million dollars.

I think that this explains why they have been moving to a paid writing staff lately.

Many of the celebrities who have contributed non-remunerated articles to the Huffington Post may be less inclined to do so now that it is part of the AOL empire, if just because the whole “cool factor” is much diminished. (See the term “AOLamer”)

Ms. Huffington will stay in charge of her web site, as well as taking over supervision AOL’s media operations, things like Techcrunch and its hyper-local news operations.

I think that this will turn out better than the AOL/Times Warner merger, but that’s a very low bar.