Arianna Huffington Seduces Journalist Over Email

The Huffington Post has hired its fourth ex-Washington Post reporter, young Jose Antonio Vargas. How did Arianna pull of this latest bit of poaching? Emails of “passion” and “exploration.” Oh, my, Ms. Huffington!

Vargas covered “the marriage” of the Internet and politics at the Washington Post, but that doesn’t mean he’s a above some straying. He’s going to oversee the Huffington Post’s new tech section in spring, reports the New York Times‘ Brian Stelter.

We can only imagine Arianna was breathy as she described for Stelter her “regular” emails with Vargas since the election. They apparently involved harnessing people for deep engagement, and were quite memorable:

I love his passion for communicating how technology impacts our lives, and exploring the many ways the Internet can be harnessed to reach new readers and engage existing ones more deeply – something we’ve been working on at HuffPost since the beginning.

Two weeks ago, Huffington hired newly-discharged Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin; a month and a half before that HuffPo poached WaPo investigations editor Lawrence Roberts. HuffPo’s editors also include longtime WaPo reporter Thomas Edsall and Nicholas Graham, of the family that owns the DC newspaper.

The big impact of the Vargas hire, of course, is that it means yet another awkward goodbye party appearance for WaPo columnist Dana Millbank, who thinks HuffPo’s DC bureau is basically a bag of craven dicks. Or rather was a bag of craven dicks. Use that at the party, Dana. Was.

(Pic via Vargas’ Facebook)