Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Newsy.com: Two men say Huffinfton Post was their idea
Peter Daou and James Boyce say they came up with the idea of a political website - where public figures would be invited to blog...
...during a meeting at co-founder Arianna Huffington’s house in December of 2004. They accuse Huffington and business partner Ken Lerer of presenting collaborated ideas as their own.
Daou and Boyce are filing suit against Huffington and Lerer -- saying the latter violated a “handshake agreement” to work together on the site. And the stakes could be high -- Forbes reports the left-leaning blog was valued at $100 million in 2008.
Politico - which broke the story - suggests the suit presents problems for the site’s heads.
“The complaint is a direct challenge to the left’s most important media property ... And it challenges Huffington’s own oft-told story of coming up with the idea in conversation with Lerer and other friends.”
And the accusation is being met with more than a few skeptics. Panelists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe -- where Arianna Huffington is a frequent guest -- say they aren’t buying Daou and Boyce’s story.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “Their credibility is undercut a bit by, they also claim to have written half the songs since Sgt. Pepper and said they created the atomic bomb and the Feds owe them, like $28,000.”
PANELIST: “I had an assistant working with Ken Lerer in his office, and basically the two of them were really generating this website on their own. Arianna was doing it out of her blog. It’s an absurd idea, and it was Ken and Arianna did this thing together. It’s just not right to say it was stolen.”
In a statement Huffington called the suit a -quote- “completely absurd, ludicrous supposition” by two men who’d been refused jobs at the site.
And Business Insider’s Henry Blodget says beyond that -- Daou and Boyce are going to have a hard time making their case look legitimate in the court of public opinion.
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