R.I.P. HuffPo’s Religion Section?

Last updated on: May 16, 2011 at 3:11 pm by John Shore

R.I.P. HuffPo’s Religion Section? 2011-05-16T15:11:22-08:00 John Shore

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[UPDATE #4: HuffPost Religion is back in place on the front page.]

[UPDATE #3: A few hours ago HuffPost Religion editor Paul Raushenbush tweeted, “HuffPost Religion isn’t going anywhere. Temporary design change on Front Page.”]

[UPDATE #2: It’s 5:50 a.m. PST Tuesday morning. Still no HuffPost Religion section. I assume they’ll announce something … well, I would think today. One thing that’s changed is that now (see update #1 below) the Healthy Living section is opening up in the same window as Huffington Post generally. Also, the header on all the Healthy Living sections I visited is now serving as a home button back to the Huffington Post front page. So it’s clear they’re still working out the exact relationship between their AOL and HuffPost content. That makes sense; of course there’s much to consider there. Another thing I noticed, which for sure is of particular interest if your write for The Huffpo Media Group*,* is that on the front pages of all the sections of the new HuffPo Healthy Living, author bylines are no longer displayed with the featured pieces. The stories linked to off the front Healthy Living pages, in other words—the stories accompanied by *pictures—*are no longer showing author bylines. And it’s pretty clear that’s part of the new template for those pages. Those stories featured in the left-hand column of the Healthy Living front pages—those not accompanied by a graphic–continue to show bylines and little author-profile boxes. Bylines continue to be displayed on featured stories within HuffPo itself.]

[UPDATE #1: Just up on the prime spot of the front page of Huffington Post is a letter from Arianna introducing HuffPo’s new Healthy Living section. No mention is made of HuffPo’s Religion section. Interestingly, if you hit the link in Arianna’s letter to the new Healthy Living section, a new browser window is launched for that section. This means that once you’re on the Healthy Living page, your back button will no longer return you to Huffington Post. As per my guess below, I think this a subtle way to begin encouraging readers to think of AOL’s Healthy Living as wholly disconnected from HuffPo. Any link within HuffPo leading to a HuffPo story still opens in the usual way, within the current window. What’s really interesting is how HuffPo Media Group will manage to present as independent from it AOL’s burgeoning new world of content, but at the same time utilize within that world HuffPo’s phenomenal commenting/social media matrix, which is everywhere marked by the Huffo brand. Will a “HuffPost Super User” remain so designated when he or she is commenting in AOL’s new territory?]

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As of this writing (3:00 p.m. Monday, May 16) there is no religion section of The Huffington Post.

On the front page of Huffington Post are the usual section buttons running along its top: Front Page, Politics, Business, Entertainment, Media, Tech, Comedy, Style, etc. What’s now missing amongst those is the button for the Living section, a subsection of which used to be Religion.

The Living section button is now labeled Healthy Living. And that button’s drop-down section-buttons are four: Body, Mind, Spirit, and Health News.

No Religion !

What’s interesting is that if you go to the Healthy Living section, it appears you are no longer within Huffington Post. What it (hugely) says across the top of that page is AOL Healthy Living. And nowhere on that page is there a button for returning you back to any page within Huffington Post. The Healthy Living section, its four subsections, and all the articles contained therein, are now presented not as Huffington Post content at all*,* but rather as AOL content exclusively.

AOL Healthy Living is the only section of the main ones listed off the Huffington Post front page for which this is true. Politics is still HuffPost Politics; Business is still HuffPost Business, and so on. Only Healthy Living takes you to a place clearly outside the HuffPo realm.

So has the HuffPo religion section gone to that big archived website in the sky?

I don’t see how, given this April 26 story in The Daily Princetonian. The article is about how Paul Raushenbush, editor of the HuffPo religion section (making him my editor, doncha know) is leaving his job as Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton to become the full-time Senior Religion Editor for the beefed-up religion section envisioned by the AOL-HuffPo media group.

My guess (and it’s just a guess) is that HuffPo/AOL has decided to move what’s now AOL Healthy Living into a specific, separate AOL area of content now under development. I would think this would mean that the company is using its vast resources to develop a whole new world of content that will exist under the auspices and banner of AOL. Furthermore, I would guess that content will be “soft”—lifestyle-type stuff—while HuffPo will stick with the “hard” categories of content, such as politics and business. That seems to be the way they’re setting it up thus far.

It’ll be interesting to watch how HuffPo Media group rolls out and presents all that new content.

Whether AOL/HuffPo’s religion section will exist under the HuffPo or AOL banner remains to be seen.

(P.S. You can still get to HuffPo’s Religion section; it’s here. You just can’t get to it directly from any Huffington Post page.)

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