Huffington: I'm no newspaper killer!

It must be confusing to be Arianna Huffington. One day you're getting lauded for your contributions to journalism; the next day you're being accused of killing it.

The Huffington Post founder and cable news ubiquity was the headline honoree at today's Mirror Awards, given out by Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Communications to recognize the best coverage of media. The news that she'd be getting a lifetime achievement award drew a wet raspberry from Advertising Age's Simon Dumenco, who described it as "bitterly ironic" that a journalism school would "honor a woman who thinks journalists should work for free!" Huffington was also recently vilified by The New Republic, which accused her of free-riding on the very newspapers she's helping to destroy (echoing an allegation leveled earlier by Time.) Just last night, she felt compelled to use her allotted five-words at the Webby Awards to defend herself, saying, "I didn't kill newspapers, okay?"

If that's the case, I asked Huffington as the Mirror Awards got underway, why do so many people think she did?