It's the trashy content that Stephen Colbert, America's greatest living patriot and media critic, targets in our Clip of the Week. In a segment from Tuesday night's "The Colbert Report," he takes HuffPo to task for promoting a story with the headline "College Students Warm Up To The Back Door."
"Obviously," says Colbert, "that provocative teaser is just clickbait and it could mean anything. But it means exactly what you think it means." Yes, HuffPo took on the topic of anal sex on America's college campuses. "Huffington Post broke this story," says Colbert, "by rolling up their sleeves and doing the kind of reporting that won them the Pulitzer Prize two years ago: They paraphrased a college newspaper column from Washington State University."
The segment is broken up into clips, and you really have to watch both, because in Part 2, Colbert brings on "youth-trend expert and managing editor of The Huffington Post, Randy Ferrar" to talk about HuffPo journalism. He's a skeevy sort of fellow and I'm not 100% certain he actually works at The Huffington Post or if his name is really Randy Ferrar -- but who's got time to check facts? It's 2014! I've got to get back to aggregating.
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.
