How Huffpo Takes Care of Family

Huffington Post bloggers aren't supposed to treat their blogs as personal ad space. But if your boss's dad happens to run the company, you can bend the rules a little.

Yesterday, a new blogger named Bill Kearney posted his first entry, announcing the launch of a Miami edition of Thrillist, the consumerist e-newsletter. "As you all should know by now, Thrillist is boasting over 400,000 subscriptions among its Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and best-of the-web 'National' men's email lifestyle guides," wrote Kearney, who edits the new edition. "Don't waste any time, sign up at www.thrillist.com."

In making his pitch, Kearney clearly violated section 3.iv of Huffpo's user agreement, which forbids bloggers to "post advertisements or solicitation of business." (While bloggers often use Huffpo to promote their books or personal blogs, there's usually at least some pretense that they're writing about a larger topic.)

But maybe Thrillist is a special case, since its co-founder, Ben Lerer, is the son of Huffpo chairman Ken Lerer? I emailed Huffpo editor Roy Sekoff and its head of PR to ask about this but have yet to receive an explanation.

It's not the first time Huffpo has served as a promotional platform for Thrillist. Back in June, Huffpo's Living section editor, Verena von Pfetten, blogged about going on an all-expenses-paid junket to Las Vegas courtesy of Thrillist and JetBlue. (You may recall this item about that trip.) Her post failed to mention the Lerer family connection. Rachel Sklar, who covers media for Huffpo, also accepted the junket and wrote it up for Radar. And Thrillist and Huffpo are close in another sense as well: They share office space in Soho.

Is this any way for a $200 million company to behave?