Hot Air

Hot Air is a prominent center-right news site and blog anchored by Ed Morrissey and the psuedonymous blogger "AllahPundit," and owned by right-wing author/internet publisher Michelle Malkin.
Although Malkin is the publisher/CEO of Hot Air, she appears to exercise little editorial control over the site, which is dominated by the yin-yang team of Morrissey and Allah H. Morrissey is the more socially conservative of the two, and more straightforward in his analyses, whereas AllahPundit is the more libertarian--and an outspoken atheist. AllahPundit's analytical style is also more complicated than Morrissey's; his rhetoric is also known for being more "street-smart" and ironic--even sarcastic.
==History==
Hot Air was founded on April 24, 2006; Malkin was and is its founder/CEO. At the time, "video-blogging" was more cutting-edge than it is now, and nearly every blog entry and prominently featured story on Hot Air contained video. The sites's logo--now abandoned so as to give the space to advertisers--showed an angry man video-taping himself while yelling at the lens; the camera was bulky, of course, compared to today's video cameras.
The more intensely visual style of Hot Air is carried on at present with a large picture for each featured story or blogpost, whether there is a video related to that post or not.
When founding Hot Air, Malkin stated an intention to provide "content and analysis you can't get anywhere else on a daily basis–both on the blog and in our original video features."
Allahpundit (whose real identity remains unknown) had guest-blogged for Malkin on her signature site in the spring of 2006. When Hot Air was founded it was anchored by AllahP and Bryan Preston. Preston left to pursue other internet reporting opportunities, and Malkin recruited Ed Morrissey as AllahP's co-blogger. At that time Morrissey was a full-time, profit-making blogger at Captain's Quarters, which he folded in order to join the Hot Air team. Morrissey also maintains his podcast, The Ed Morrissey show, which is promoted on Hot Air and considered for all intents and purposes to be a part of the Hot Air newsgathering and commentary.
Since 2008 Hot Air has moved to a more open-blog-style format, integrating a separate site-within-the site called "The Green Room." Here, lower-ranking bloggers can post their own editorials and reportage; they sometimes have their entries "promoted" to the main page, in a fashion similar to that of other major political news/commentary sites such as the Daily Kos and Red State.
==Viewpoints==
AllahPundit's prominence on Hot Air is a contentious issue for some of the site's most conservative readers--especially for some of Malkin's more avid followers. AllahPundit is often criticized for his atheism and for his frequent criticisms of (and snark toward) Governor Sarah Palin and other "hard-right" figures. AllahP is also known for his frequent posts on pop-culture and his self-deprecating humor (he often refers to himself, for example, as a "beta male").
Michelle Malkin has received some pushback for keeping "AllahPundit" on her payroll, particularly from the more socially conservative readers on Hot Air. Malkin does not post on Hot Air, but is periodically referenced there as "the Boss." Both AllahPundit and Morrissey have publicly disagreed with her take on the affairs of the day in Hot Air posts, and each has political positions that are significantly different from hers.
AllahPundit's previous site contained a disclaimer to the effect that his moniker was not, in fact, "anti-Muslim," as some casual visitors were wont to assume.
=="Scoops" by AllahPundit, Ed Morrissey, and Michelle Malkin==
AllahPundit's first site, Allah Is in the House was founded on August 27, 2003. The author wrote in the persona of Allah, using similar language to that of terrorist organizations but assuming the viewpoint of the God such organizations follow. (The author distinguished between the viewpoint being satirized and that of mainstream Muslims.) The blog specialized in written and Photoshop-based political satire. After a hiatus in May 2004, the blog reemerged, continuing its satiric nature while largely abandoning the "Allah voice."After October 2004 the blog stopped being regularly updated and abandoned the web address allahpundit.com. After occasional entries at allahakbar.blogspot.com, AllahPundit shut down his individual blogging operations altogether. 
In September 2004, Allahpundit was a key player in debunking the Killian documents hoax. Mary Mapes, producer of 60 Minutes, blamed Allahpundit, among others, for "working anonymously in what appeared to be huge numbers, in unison, to destroy the Bush-Guard story."Mary Mapes, Truth and Duty, p. 201. Largely due to this controversy, the website was among the Top Blogs Cited in Political Postings for the United States presidential election, 2004.Blogpulse Campaign Radar 2004. 
</ref> Posts from AllahP's oldAllah Is in the House blog are archived at the Internet Archive, although the image files, which include the Photoshopped pictures for which the site was best known, are not.Archives of Allah Is in the House. AllahPundit has stated that he is unlikely to do PhotoShops in the future, due to his grueling writing/posting schedule.
Ed Morrissey may have been best-known during the years he ran Captain's Quarters as the most open stateside defier of the Canadian ban on speech about the activities of its parliament; during the clampdown on media coverage of the parliament's scandals Captain's Quarters became one of the go-to sites for Canadians who wanted to hear what was going on within their government.
Back when Malkin was a frequent contributor to Hot Air, she once accused hip hop artist Akon for "degrading women" on a Hot Air video; Akon's record label, Universal Music Group, forced YouTube to remove the video that Malkin had excerpted by issuing a DMCA takedown notice--but decided to retract this notice after the Electronic Frontier Foundation joined Malkin and Hot Air in contesting the removal as a misuse of copyright law.
==Hot Air's Ranking Among Blogs==
In 2007, Michelle Malkin credited AllahPundit (often referred to as "AP," or "AllahP") with "turn[ing] the site into a must-read" and thus causing it to soar in popularity "from nowhere to a top-30 site on Technorati's Top 100 list."<ref>Michelle Malkin, "Drudge disses Hot Air", hotair.com (March 19, 2007).
In August of 2009, as the healthcare debate began to increase political involvement among regular citizens, the stats for Hot Air became nearly competitive with those of rival Daily Kos, based on raw traffic--yet Alexa results (based on traffic; this system compares websites with other websites rather than specifically ranking blogs) placed Hot Air at number 6,352, versus Daily Kos's 4,105--a few thousand place-differences in rank over the Internet in its entirety. The The Truth Laid Bear's more blog-specific ranking system, however, placed Daily Kos at #1, with Hot Air coming in at #18--a difference of 17 spots. 
==External links==
*Archives of Allah Is in the House
*Hot Air
*AP's Youtube page
*Allahpundit on Twitter
Category:Bloggers