Huffington Post Auctions Away Internship Position for More than $13,000

Posted by Krista Rogers

Despite the common phrase that is often said to justify a blunder, all press is NOT good press. In an obvious effort to grab attention, The Huffington Post decided to hold an auction on charitybuzz.com for a two to three month internship in NYC or D.C. Requirements include the applicant be at least 18 years old and have some serious extra dough to spend.

Now while the second caveat is not clearly stated in the auction regulations, the current bid for the short term internship is $13,000 with a minimum next bid of $15,500. And you thought your unpaid internship set you back!

Initially, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Since the money raised will be donated to The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights charity, paying for a job almost seems justified. However, the HuffPost has had celebrity contributors including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Norman Mailer and John Cusack. They also reportedly raised over $25 million in seed money so it is hard to swallow the idea that a mere $13,000 written from a student’s trust fund is going to make a significant impact.

The issue of an aspiring journalist who wants to work for an American liberal news website and has the money to “jumpstart their career in the blogosphere,” is not what we are here to discuss. That is already generating enough negative feedback among critical bloggers and journalists. The question we want to answer is “what to do with PR backlash and how to prevent it?”

PR backlash results from poor research and poor planning. Why did The Huffington Post choose to go down the auction avenue as an effort to drive readers to their site? A lot of the negative feedback they have received questions the logic of the auction. The plan is flawed to the core because the obvious winner and future intern for the HuffPo is not going to be the most driven, qualified or intelligent journalist but instead the person with the biggest checkbook balance.

While I condone inventiveness and the ability to take the road less traveled, it is more important to consider motivation and target audience before executing a plan for media attention. So no, not all press is good press. Ironically, the Huffington Post Seems to Agree.

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Tags: Crisis PR, hype, issues management, media, reputation, stunt

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 5:21 am and is filed under Client Service Results, Crisis PR, Hypemeister Honor Roll, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.