They grow up so fast, don’t they? Online political media giant Politico turns five years old today, and to celebrate, the site posted a video roast by some quotable notables in the political media world. While the site has arguably earned the right to toot its own horn at least once every half-decade, did they really have to overshadow the birthday of Saved By The Bell actress Tiffani-Amber Thiessen?

Ed Schultz, star of MSNBC’s primetime lead The Ed Show, is coming off of a year that saw his cable news fortunes rise considerably. On the strength of his years of broadcast experience, and his early catch of 2011′s populist protest wave, and a series of events that landed him in the 8pm timeslot on MSNBC, Schultz is now firmly embedded at the forefront of liberal media consciousness. In this portion of our exclusive interview, Ed discusses his views on hot-button issues like marriage equality, abortion rights, and gun control.

Bill Moyers has been making the regular media rounds to promote his return to PBS, and on Friday joined Arianna Huffington for a discussion on the media. But the subject quickly changed to the infamous billionaire George Soros, and Moyers ended up defending Soros from some of the attacks leveled at him by the American right wing. He called Soros a “victim” of attacked leveled against him by “Fox News assassins.” In the midst of a discussion on the media and contemporary society, Moyers cited Soros as an example of someone whom people should be listening more to.

Now that Herman Cain is out of the Republican presidential race, we have officially kicked off the phase where everyone reflects on the ups and downs of his campaign. And on This Week today, George Will wasted no time in calling the ex-candidate “disrespectful” and a “charlatan” for using his candidacy to promote his book and not be a serious candidate bringing ideas to the table like everyone else.

Forbes has come out with its annual list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” and, as is to be expected, several recognizable names in media made the cut. According to Forbes, the women on the list were selected “not just for being on top” but also for “being smack in the middle of Richter-registering events.” (Quite literally in some instances, if yesterday’s east coast earthquake is taken into account.)

Given the polarized nature of politics in this decade, it takes a certain amount of fearlessness to publicly switch teams– or even admit to a past reawakening. While certainly not alone in doing so, former Carter campaign staffer Rep. Michele Bachmann and former conservative gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington present a striking contrast in how to let the base down easy with news that you are or may have been playing on the wrong team. Simply put, it’s a lot easier to do when switch parties doesn’t necessarily mean switching beliefs systems– and yes, one is possible without the other.

NBC heavy hitters Tom Brokaw and David Gregory stopped by Morning Joe to share some of their thoughts on the deficit negotiations and Brokaw warned that the “fun” is far from over. Brokaw also admitted how impressed he was with the Tea Party’s effect on Washington and concluded “if you want to change Washington, you’ve got to look at the Tea Party model.”

This morning Arianna Huffington appeared on the This Week roundtable, and found herself echoing sentiments of others like Mike Huckabee that media reports on Michele Bachmann’s migraines were completely unfair. Huffington claimed Bachmann is definitely getting the “female treatment,” and instead wished that people would focus on the many legitimate problems with Bachmann instead.

After a landmark 1,000 issues chock-full of (fake) journalistic excellence, newspaper of fictitious record The Onion is launching a full-scale assault on the Pulitzer Prize Committee to demand an award of their own, in every possible category– including “public service.” To butter up the committee, an “independent” advocacy group is launching an initiative to send belligerent form letters to the “sick, allegedly on-the-take little cabal of excellence-rapers” that hand out the award.

Director Andrew Rossi‘s upcoming film Page One: Inside The New York Times (opening June 17th in New York, and nationally July 1) documents a year in the life of the Gray Lady, but also sets the table for what may either be the print media’s suffocation within, or emergence from, the chrysalis of the brave new media world. Rossi spoke with Mediaite about his film, its de facto star (Times Media reporter David Carr), and what it all means for journalism.

Good news for Aol competitor Yahoo: according to an email by Brian Robinson, the senior director of Yahoo Media Network strategies and insights, the traffic experienced by Yahoo blogs over the past few months tops that of the Huffington Post and Gawker.

As the relatively recently-formed Aol / HuffPo hybrid prepares to fold Aol News into the Huffington Post, the company has revealed that it will replace Jai Singh with longtime “HuffPostian” Nico Pitney as the sites’ managing editor.

Its no surprise to anyone that Huffington Post and Aol News will be merging, but what surprised us, is that in the days to come, Aol News will no longer be producing any original content, and will instead be entirely serviced by Huffington Post. Since Aol CEO Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington jointly announced plans [...]

Tom Zeller has left his job as the NYT‘s energy to take on the role of the Huffington Post’s senior reporter, energy and environment. According to the site’s founder, Arianna Huffington, Zeller will be charged with covering “the economic and social implications of energy and climate policy, including the impact on the health of our communities.”

This makes Zeller the third big name that has left the New York Times for HuffPost after national editor Tim O’Brien and business editor Peter Goodman. And with good reason, apparently: according to a source at the paper, the move is “all about the money.”

Andrew Breitbart isn’t angry; he’s just enlightened. That’s the message of his contentiously-titled new book, Righteous Indignation, a work that may look and sound like the fruit of rage, but at its core, is an exposition of the power structure Breitbart sees himself fighting against. It’s a recruiting tool to build his army in the war against what he calls “Democratic media complex” that leaves no stone unturned on the left. In turn, Breitbart leaves many questions on how to police the right unanswered. I sat down with Breitbart on Monday to get a deeper look into who he’s fighting, why he’s fighting them, and just how much bad behavior he is willing to overlook from conservatives in order to take liberals down.

As it turns out, Jonathan Tasini, the journalist and union leader behind the lawsuit filed against the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington and Aol for not paying its contributors, also keeps a blog off his own – called Working Life – that offers interested writers the opportunity to produce content… for free.

Jonathan Tasini, the journalist who spearheaded the much-discussed lawsuit against the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington and Aol for lack of payment to bloggers, spoke to paidContent, appropriately enough, about his reasons for filing.

While the Huffington Post immediately released a response to the lawsuit filed against it by a group of disgruntled bloggers seeking payment – calling the suit “baseless” before having read it, its founder, Arianna Huffington, has now issued a more in-depth criticism of the document.

(Note – this post was originally published on March 21, but has been re-posted given the news of a class-action lawsuit brought against Aol, Huffington Post and Arianna Huffington) What have I missed in the recent hullabaloo over the Huffington Post bloggers who write for free? As I understand it, last week, the Newspaper Guild and its 26,000-member union called for all unpaid Huffington Post contributors to withhold their work in support of a “strike” launched earlier this year by another organization. OK, fair enough: a newspaper guild rightly wants writers to get paid. In these tough times for the industry, it’s important to have those vigorous advocates, and anyone who has qualms about writing for free, either morally or practically, should refrain from so doing. Writing is not just an art – for many, it is also their only source of income.

Well, now it’s official: Several Huffington Post contributors have come together to launch a lawsuit against the site. The suit comes after weeks of very public complaints about the lack of monetary compensation bloggers have received in the wake of HuffPost’s $315 million deal with Aol.

Will the last national news host or anchor to leave the national spotlight please turn off the lights? On a day when the opinion media world was focused on Glenn Beck‘s seemingly sudden departure from his Fox News program, reports have surfaced that NBC has been told that Today Show co-host Matt Lauer will be leaving the show when his contract expires at the end of next year.

Time magazine’s annual “Time 100″ list is live today, highlighting 2010′s most influential people. Unsurprisingly, the list includes several big media names, proving once again that those who bring you the news continue to be quite adept at making the news.

In case your day has yet to been made completely miserable, allow us to remind you that it happens to be “April Fools’ Day.” Yeah, we know: Blegh. The Huffington Post decided to get in the holiday spirit, as it were, by telling readers about a brand new feature they’ve just introduced: digital subscriptions to HuffPost especially for New York Times employees. (This is the part where you go “Teehee!”)

Arianna Huffington sat down with The New York Times to discuss pleasant topics like whether her father, a former newspaperman, would feel about accusations that her site is responsible for that whole death of print thing we keep reading about in newspapers.

The Times broached another contentious and persistent criticism the Huffington Post has been contending with since it’s inception, and especially in the wake of its deal with Aol: That HuffPost is too “lefty.”

Researchers from U.C. Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center developed a survey to find out just how individual Huffington Post bloggers feel about the site’s payment system – especially in light of its $ 315 million Aol deal.