MediaFile

From the TechCrunch conference in San Francisco, this post is brought to you by Alexei Oreskovic and Sarah McBride:

Michael Arrington, one of the most high-profile figures in the world of tech blogging, has lost the TechCrunch soapbox he built. But he’s found a new way to get his point across: T-shirts

Arrington took the stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference on Monday, moments after parent-company AOL announced that he was no longer part of the company due to his new role heading up a $20 million venture capital fund.

“It’s no longer a good situation for me to stay at TechCrunch,” Arrington said, calling it a sad moment for him and promising to get the controversy out of the way at the start, to avoid distracting from the 3-day conference in San Francisco.

True to form, the pugnacious Arrington unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a t-shirt with the words “unpaid blogger” printed in large letters, a jab at AOL/Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, who had insisted that Arrington was no longer an AOL employee after news of his VC fund surfaced.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington joined us Monday for the premiere of the 2011 Reuters Global Technology Summit.

Here’s a clip of Tim Armstrong answering why he thinks the expansion of AOL’s local news service Patch is a sound investment.

And another clip of Tim Armstrong, this time talking about one of two Tech CEOs he admires:

Another high-level AOL executive is heading for the exit door after the company shifted its content strategy again with the $315 million acquisitionof the Huffington Post. David Eun (pictured left), the ex-Googler recruited by AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong to be president of AOL media and studios, is leaving. Eun is a causality of the Huff Po purchase that put the charismatic high profile  founder Arianna Huffington in charge of AOL’s content.

In a memo to AOL employees posted on AOL’s technology blog TechCrunch, Eun described how he and Armstrong tried to find a place for Eun at AOL after the acquisition.

“I came to AOL last year to be the leader of the media organization. With the historic acquisition of The Huffington Post, my role and responsibilities as President, AOL Media are changing. Tim and I have discussed at length how I might continue within the new organizational structure, but ultimately there isn’t a role that matches what I am seeking to do.”

Arianna Huffington and James Pitaro photo courtesy of Beet.TV

Traditional media companies have spent the better part of two years trying to cope with the double whammy of recessionary forces washing away advertising revenue and the changing habits of consumers. So how do a bunch of young buck  Internet companies see themselves ?  As media companies!

Well sort of. Not, you know, old school media companies.  Rather, “technology enabled media companies,” as  James Pitaro, vice president, media at Yahoo phrased it when pressed on Tuesday during a  panel discussion about the future of media hosted by I Want Media.

Pitaro was on hand with a bunch of other big names like Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post;  David Eun, AOL Media president; and Josh Cohen, senior business project manager at Google News. (Go here for the complete lineup).

It seemed only a bit odd that media star Arianna Huffington was the guest host on CNBC the day the all-important stress test results were due. Not to play down her credentials in media or commentary circles, but where were the celebrated bank analysts, the corporate chieftains and the investment gurus who so routinely enjoy a dose of the limelight on America's Business Channel?

Wasn't this the perfect day for a newsmaker rather than a news talker? The Huffington Post founder has been a good reality check on market cheerleaders who live on CNBC, but on Stress-Test Thursday, the less-than-casual viewer expects insiders with insight. It tasted like something strange and exotic had made its way into the DealZone coffee machine.

Then disgraced former New York Governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer joined the fray, and the slightly odd became surreal. Spitzer, who casually noted he was invited to the show (hint, hint), gave a spirited view from the nosebleed seats, far back from the federal policymakers' bench.

Just got back from a panel discussion at Michael’s restaurant in Manhattan where Huffingtonpost founder Arianna Huffington said that the news and commentary website is going to raise money to fund investigative journalism projects.

I asked her for more details afterward. She said there wouldn’t be any for another three months or so. That leaves me with precious little more to deliver than context. Her plan comes as the news business itself faces dire code-orange-style threat levels — many U.S. newspaper publishers are mired in debt and their ad sales are thinning, making it hard to see how they will soldier on. Not only that, investors are fleeing from them like the proverbial rats from a sinking ship and their equity value is hitting the low single digits.

For all media companies, whether or not they’re in the hands of investors, the ad revenue decline is hitting them hard, and all sorts of publications are axing staff. It leaves many media talking heads and bloggers wondering whether news will survive into the 21st century, at least in the way we know it.

Nationally syndicated columnist and Huffingtonpost.com co-founder/editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington may not have been a personal supporter of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nomination (HuffPost didn’t endorse a candidate), but she has kind words for the New York senator and former first lady all the same.

I met Arianna in New York on Tuesday to ask her what she, as the author of a book about women conquering their fears, thought about Clinton’s failure to secure the nomination and her political future.

Here’s what she said about…

Supporting Obama:

Since this is an election where we are clear that it’s in the best interests of the country that (Arizona Republican Senator) John McCain is not president , and we have seen that Obama has a much better chance of defeating John McCain, it’s a very clear choice. (With Obama) there’s no equivocation. It’s the future, getting out of Iraq. It’s a dramatically different take on the economy. It’s a clear break with the past, which the country’s really longing for.