The Huffington Post raised $25 million right before traffic cratered post election. Ad Age's Simon Dumenco ran the new numbers and decided HuffPo is just a sad new version of Salon.

Seeing Arianna Huffington in the LA Times Sunday, someone who has worked for the internet publisher tipped us to a purported lookalike: Ursula from the Little Mermaid. Mean and juvenile! But maybe appropriate!

Other publishers are cutting back on holiday parties and bonuses, but not Arianna Huffington! It's designer sweaters for her long-suffering employees again this year. So long as they do an advertorial "thank you."

Arianna Huffington may have raised $25 million last month, but with her traffic tanking post-election, the Huffington Post publisher is clinging to old desperation tactics. Like straight jacking other people's content.

The Huffington Post announced just weeks ago that it had landed $25 million in new investments. Now, their traffic is (predictably) plunging. Arianna Huffington's dealmaking abilities are awesome.

This video of blogmistress Arianna Huffington explaining to Charlie Rose "how blogs work" in her ominous Greek accent is like a dada performance art. There's no way this is real. It's like the blind leading the blind. God, I wish I was stoned right now. What is a link? Why, in Arianna's world, it's "a magical thing."

Arianna Huffington had some good advice for aspiring bloggers on the Daily Show tonight — blog your passion, go with your first impression — but her most important technique was communicated only implicitly, by way of example: Promote the hell out of yourself. From a brief guest stint on the Comedy Central show, Huffington gleaned exclusive backstage video for her own site, negotiations to have host Jon Stewart blog for her exclusively, a big plug for her "Complete Guide To Blogging" book and a televised recruiting call for free writers for her "blogging the meltdown" project.

♦ No official confirmation yet, but media insiders say David Gregory has been tapped to take over as host of Meet the Press. [Politico]
♦ It's rumored Carine Roitfeld is replacing Anna Wintour at Vogue. [Gawker]
♦ A former employee of Charles Kushner is accusing him of funneling cash from his real estate empire to prop up Jared Kushner's Observer. [Daily Intel]
♦ Harvey Weinstein owes Cindy Adams $10,000. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast has shuttered its social networking site Flip.com. [Gawker]
♦ CBS is producing a new hidden camera show with Ashton Kutcher. [NYT]
♦ Katie Couric has a new haircut, in case you haven't noticed. [HuffPo]
♦ Arianna Huffington's how-to book for aspiring bloggers. [Jossip]
♦ Ever fantasized about having lunch with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel? You can—for $2,500. [NYO]

Back when Arianna Huffington founded the Huffington Post, she promised a blogging free-for-all where Washington D.C.'s best and brightest would rub virtual shoulders with megawatt Hollywood movie stars. Three years later, the site's political promise has been fulfilled, but HuffPo can boast little in the way of celebrities aside from ponderings written by the other brother on Wings, pre-emptive "I Didn't Do the Nanny" missives from Rob Lowe, and the occasional drop-in by Charlotte's husband from Sex and the City. And then, for some reason, there is Candy Spelling.

We were impressed last month when it was rumored that the Huffington Post may have raised $15 million in new investment, a big accomplishment for a media company at a time when the media economy is in the trash. Well, those rumors turned out to be false. Actually, HuffPo has raised $25 million from a venture capital firm. Amazing. So what will they do with all this cash?

On the heels of reports her megablog Huffington Post has received $15 million in venture capital funding, Arianna Huffington got the SNL treatment last night, and it was...really tame. New performer Michaela Watkins captured the details of the HuffPo founder as well as she did in her audition tape, but it missed out on so much of what's really meaningful about Arianna — you know, callous mistreatment of those under her employ, and a fondness for cults. Click for Ms. Watkins — and Arianna's — Weekend Update debut.Click to view She got the accent and nonsense-making fairly right, but what about Arianna's legendary pettiness? Hopefully next time we see Arianna, she'll be huddled over three BlackBerrys in her bathroom sobbing. All things considered, we preferred the original audition:

According to some reports, the Huffington Post has raised $15 million in a new round of investment. But nobody really knows for sure whether that's true, yet! Let us say right up front that if it is true—and the Times UK says it is—this will be the coup of the media meltdown. Raising cash like that in this economic environment is impressive, and we would have to tip our hats to HuffPo, and acknowledge that we have wildly underestimated them. Here are all of the details from various reports on Arianna's maybe-triumph:

So much for doom-mongering and talk of post-election crashes: The Huffington Post, founded by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, has supposedly landed $15 million in financing from Oak Investment Partners. Or maybe not! [PaidContent]

Arianna Huffington is branching out and branching out some more! Fresh off her adventurous night subbing as the host of Rachel Maddow's show, the accented mogul (and current non-friend to us) announced today that the Huffington Post "is going to raise money to fund investigative journalism projects." How does she plan to come up with the cash for this, the most expensive type of reporting? She won't say! Yet. According to Reuters, she said there won't be any details for three months. Perhaps in that time the economy will improve and donors will look to throw money at investigative journalism? Ha, no. So where will this cash come from? Some guesses:

♦ When Barack Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes that he was reading a book about FDR, what book was he referring to? At least one publisher wants to know. [NYT]
♦ National Geographic is getting into the videogame business. [THR]
♦ Pepsi has dumped its longtime ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, in favor of TBWA/Chiat/Day. [NYT]
♦ Rosie O'Donnell is planning to appear on three episodes of Rachael Ray's cooking show this month. [NYDN]
♦ ESPN has outbid Fox for the broadcast rights to college football's Bowl Championship Series, beginning in 2011. [WSJ]
♦ Maxim has named NBC's Amy Robach as "hottest news anchor." [TVNewser]
♦ Just in time for Christmas, Fox News' Sean Hannity is sponsoring a series of "Freedom Concerts." [HuffPo]
♦ Here's video of a stilted Arianna Huffington filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, in case you missed it. [Gawker]

Arianna Huffington's thick Greek accent is usually a social asset. It adds spice to a televised panel discussion, and on the party circuit encourages a conversation partner to lean in intimately to understand the former socialite's words. But give the internet publisher her own hourlong TV show, as with her guest-hosting stint tonight on the Rachel Maddow Show, and the accent becomes a liability, like a single seasoning taking over a dish. "You can't understand a word she says and she even makes my cat get irritated," one tipster wrote 20 minutes into the program.

Arianna Huffington is filling in for Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program this evening. Until then, the Huffington Post co-founder has been snooping around Rachel's corner office and getting prepared for the show. Arianna's video tour of Maddow's collection of pantsuits after the jump.

This is Michaela Watkins, and she's apparently the newest addition to the cast of Saturday Night Live, the ancient sketch comedy show that is relevant again because a) you can watch just the funny bits online and b) there was apparently a presidential election this year. (Ok fine and c) they have a good cast and it seems less terrible in its current incarnation than it did the last time everyone talked about how they were watching it again.) In the attached clip, Watkins is doing her audition bit: a pretty great impression of noted blog-runner and grudge-holder and Internet Doyenne Arianna Huffington! Hooray, making fun of Arianna Huffington will soon hit the mainstream! Click to watch.

Tina Brown appeared on Fox Business today to chat about her new site, the Daily Beast. It turns out that credit for the venture goes to Barry Diller, who, Brown says, was having trouble finding anything worthwhile to read on the Web and brought the idea to Tina because he wanted someone he could trust to tell him what to read every day. Oh, and don't be fooled by the title of the segment, "The Battle of the Blogs," or the lead-in, which suggests she's giving the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report a run for their money. She isn't competing with anyone. "It's not a competitive situation... it's a collegial model."

Not Your Average Bear. Family Guy spinoff The Cleveland Show has received a full-season order from Fox, but has been pushed all the way to Fall. In another announcement we totally saw coming, THR reports that "Arianna Huffington will join the cast in a recurring role as the [talking] matriarch of a bear family," who says things like, "Da eeconomeec game is not supposed to be rrrigged like some shaydee ring toss on a carneeval midway. Now who vould like another helping of flopping sah-mon?" [THR]