Is the Drudge Report shrinking? One blog thinks so, and cites Alexa data — by far the most inaccurate of the website-measurement sites — to prove it. Is Drudge shrinking? No, but it also isn't growing as fast as some other sites, including the 3-year old Huffington Post. HuffPo has certainly grown its readership, recently passing 3 million unique visitors per month. But where it really matters — total visits and daily uniques, the number of people who come back every day — Drudge continues to dominate. All the more impressive, since Drudge maintains a tiny two-person staff, while HuffPo's fills a SoHo office. The sites compared by (more accurate) numbers:

According to her bio, Jessica Wakeman is "an associate blog editor at Huffington Post." We are not really sure what that means except that she writes totally adorable blog posts about media and all the people in media who she loves, like a little Rachel Sklar. Last time we checked in, she was distraught to learn that to "make it" in New York, "you need a strategy." Her mentor Vanessa Grigoriadis told her! Gosh! Wakeman decided she better stick with the web, a safe space for earnest and sincere young women, where Wakeman can work on writing about important cultural things, like her idol Vanessa or "Ariel Levy or Emily Nussbaum." Today, Wakeman is a little bit upset at her favoritest magazine ever!

Here is an honorific that we should have been keeping track of more closely: Huffington Post's monthly "Woman of Style." This award is bestowed by HuffPo blogger and author Lesley M.M. Blume, who, according to her bio, "has devoted herself to the study of irreverence, chic eccentricity, and extravagant personas." A worthwhile and rigorous pursuit! Though Blume is—we have to be honest here—a somewhat more over-the-top writer than her skill level and a sense of prudence would dictate. This month's Woman of Style is Faith-Ann Young, "A free-wheeling music reporter and photographer for Monocle, Flavorpill, MOG, and Blender," whose style "at once evokes a 1960s and 70s free spirit — and also the anarchism of the internet generation." Do tell!

Arianna Huffington doesn't quite deny the possibility she'll sell the Huffington Post in a story for tomorrow's Times, saying only that she hasn't discussed a sale. One source told the Times that HuffPo executives investigated possible sale prices and figured the site is worth around $200 million, or $50 for each visitor. In the meantime, HuffPo is going to help put your local newspaper out of business - and probably undermine in its own value - by metroblogging:

Arianna Huffington came to this internet with little more than a URL, a dream and a whole lot of connections. Now, according to Nielsen online, the Huffington Post has surpassed the Drudge Report in traffic. What perfect timing for a New Yorker essay on the state of online journalism and how she's changing the rules.

A tipster points out that horndogs Googling for "ashley dupre naked" get, as their first result, this search engine optimization page from the Huffington Post. It has a zillion search terms and three big ads on it, but no Ashley in the buff as promised. Not even a witty op-ed post. At least if you search for "ashley dupre photos" or "ashley dupre pictures" and click the Valleywag link atop the page, we deliver.

OMG, did you see that video, the one where a television reporter gets bird shit in his mouth on camera? We did too! Because 800 gullible people sent it to us. The clip is a fake. "That's not our guy. That's not our guy at all," a surprised guy named Chuck said when we called up WXYZ, the local Detroit news station identified by the Huffington Post as the video's producer. "That's not even our microphone," he told us. Yeah, we thought we smelled a rat when we heard the crowd of people laughing in the background. Come on, HuffPo, have you ever seen a local news team out in the field with more than like, a camera guy, and if they're lucky, the van driver? Us neither.
UPDATE:Oh, HuffPo. Editing a credulous item about a fake video with a blase update implying you knew it was a spoof all along is just silly. Especially when your changes get recorded in our RSS feed:

23/6 is the political satire website from the Huffington Post and IAC. You know, sort of an Onion for the crowd that goes to College Humor for the biting wit. Now's your chance to get the sure-to-be-valuable commemorative 23/6 t-shirt! Look how excited one recipient is:

The demise of Conde Nast's scrapbook site for teenaged girls, Flip.com, was a reminder. How is that other big website launch of 2007 going? 23/6, a joint venture between Barry Diller's IAC and Kenny Lerer's Huffington Post, was two years in the making. The political humor launched in November to lackluster reviews; but maybe it's caught fire since, what with the elections and all. Who are we kidding? A quick search on Compete.com shows 23/6 is as stillborn as Time Inc's Office Pirates, Viacom's Virtual Lower East Side — and every other site that springs from the loins of New York's media titans. They really should have read The Innovator's Dilemma, that standard reference book for young-at-heart moguls, more carefully.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams "loves his nickname," says Rachel Sklar over at HuffPo. The perenially upbeat media blogger dubbed him 'BriWi' at some point, we couldn't even begin to tell you why. Makes him sound like some newfangled networking device from Apple. Oooh, maybe he is! Thing is, when she mentions it to him in a video interview, he looks like he just wants to bolt. Or smack her, whatever ends the whole thing fastest.

Ian Spiegelman, the gnomish ex-Postie, is blogging about politics on HuffPo. (Seriously, who isn't blogging on HuffPo these days? Their contrib index is like the 1998 Census. Even I'm there.) Anyway, Spiegelman is half-blogging, half-plugging his book How To Rig An Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative. In his post Spiegelman rails against Republican gerrymandering and fraud for a while and then this: "[L]ast week I stopped by the Board of Elections in Kew Gardens, Queens, filled out a new voter registration form, and declared myself a member of the Republican Party." If Spiegelman acts like he did at the last party he went to, the Republican Party will soon have a knock-down profanity-laced shoving match on its hands.

Author, philosopher (and Paul Janka lookalike!) Bernard-Henri Levy was recently queried about his personal style by Amanda Christine Miller, who is like the Huffington Post's low-rent answer to Deborah Solomon. (Previously she has asked CNN hottie Christiane Amanpour about her safari jackets and Slash about his top hat.) This week she embarrassed America with the man the French call simply BHL.

Successful rap producer Jermaine Dupri probably didn't win any friends for his Huffington Post entry defending Jay-Z's decision to sell his new album American Gangster online only as a full album. Dupri may not be a polished spokesperson, and no one wants to hear, "Why do people not care how we — the people who make music — eat?" Not when it comes from someone tied as the sixteenth wealthiest hip-hop mogul. Or when that person also gets to sleep with Janet Jackson. But — I can't believe I'm saying this — Dupri is right. Of course, artists should have the right to determine how their creations are packaged. In admitting that it's about money, too, he's just being honest. Music is a business. It's about coming to mutually agreeable terms with the customer, not catering to his every whim. Even Steve Jobs lets musicians sell songs on Apple's iTunes in album-only packages. Ultimately, if consumers really have a problem with the way they do business, the artists will fail. That's their right, too.

This Thanksgiving, as you add the last pat of butter to the mashed potatoes while trying to ignore your great uncle's comments about how your mother's like Crisco because she's fat in the can, be thankful that you're not Brad Pitt. So says Bonnie Fuller, who, in her latest HuffPo blog post, points out that she believes her own magazine's report about how strained things could be at the Pitt home in Missouri on Thursday!

Alec Baldwin's HuffPo blogs are best read to yourself with the voice of his '30 Rock' character Jack Donaghy. Heed this advice especially while reading the final paragraph of his post titled
"Three Random Things":"I miss my make-up artist, Stacey Panepinto. I miss my hairstylist, Richard Esposito. I miss all of the 30 ROCK cast and crew, who I don't see anymore because of this motherfucking, motherfucking, motherfucking strike."

Though it happened on the pages of the apparently profitable Huffington Post, it could have just as easily have been on an episode of the Hills. Dreamboat playwright, blogger, and writer for ABC's Brother and Sisters Jon Robin Baitz responded at length to an incredibly patronizing and, well, shitty piece Times Theater critic Charles Isherwood wrote. Isherwood had wondered "whatever it is television and movie writers do when they are not cooking up dialogue for detectives, superheroes or nerdy, horny teenagers." "You, sir, are a dick," Baltz replied. (Okay, paraphrasing!)

IAC and the Huffington Post brought fake news site 23/6 out of beta today. It only took them two years to come up with this? The site features political satire and targets people in the news with articles, videos and photos. If this sounds familiar, it's possibly because HBO and AOL already tried the same concept out with This Just In, to which the Wall Street Journal compares 23/6. The Journal does not note that This Just In shuttered in September. Another reason for pessimism? The site hasn't sold out its inventory for launch. It's currently running ads for BustedTees, another IAC company. Seriously, what kind of crappy blog displays ads from its parent company's network?

Guess what's live today? 23/6, the IAC-Huffpo comedy site that is pretty much two years in the making! Back in August, we pretty thoroughly trashed the beta. And now... here we are. (Launching a website on a Friday!?!? Do not ever do this, by the way.) So, really, what's to say? Well: Is there anything less funny than comedy? And: It's like Newser, but with irony! But we hope it's a huge success. We wouldn't want Barry Diller and HuffPo's Ken Lerer to lose any of their magical internet credibility. Also we hope the 23/6 kids don't hate working for 23/6 as much as we hear pretty much everyone currently can't stand working at HuffPo.

We're hearing vague rumors there's some business-end craziness at the Huffington Post. One ad guy actually left for Portfolio and some other people got cut. We also hear fuzzy rumors that there's a freeze in hiring on the biz end, leading to suspicions that they've cut some deal with AOL to provide business end services&mdash:for perhaps a stake?

Brian Williams hosted "Saturday Night Live," and the reviews are in! "The show was a great success. His acting was nuanced, subtle, and wonderful, the lines were delivered naturally (not a surprise), his characters were colorful, he took enough risks and didn't cross any lines, and lastly: HE'S FUNNY!" Of course that was written by his daughter, but that's what the Huffington Post is for. In other news, my mom did an awesome job on some stuff this weekend too. [HuffPo]