No doubt having read the news that Politics Daily and some other branches of AOL’s online network were going to get killed off after the merger with the Huffington Post, conservative columnist Matt Lewis announced today on his blog that he’s jumping ship to Tucker Carlson’s site, the Daily Caller. But it wasn’t just the impending demise of his site. It was the spirit of the thing. “I have no personal issue with Ms. Huffington, and that I am not a ‘Huff-hater,’” he wrote. “However … it occurs to me that AOL has vastly underestimated the public perception (I would argue the accurate impression) that Huffington is a far-left liberal. Obviously, I am more than happy to write for a mainstream news outlet where differing opinions are allowed to flourish, but I am less comfortable with the notion of being permanently affiliated with an overtly left-of-center (sometimes activist) outlet.” Lewis isn’t off base — the heartland readership of AOL’s news sites is bound to sit somewhere to the right of Arianna’s. And there’s a definite possibility they might be as shocked by the change in editorial tone as, say, your grandmother is going to be when she gets the first issue of Tina Brown’s Newsweek. So, probably a good move on Lewis’s part. Wonder who’s next?
My Farewell* Post to Politics Daily Readers [Politics Daily/AOL]
