According to this NYT acticle, Arianna Huffington is putting together a group, celebrity blog project at www.huffingtonpost.com that will soon debut. Featured bloggers will include Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

An interesting concept. I’m not sure how I feel about this valuing of the “celebrity” voice, but it should make for entertaining reading occasionally.

The article focussed on how this blog is a reaction to popular, right-wing Web sites out there like the Drudge report, but I was more interested by two other aspects of this that were mentioned (or not mentioned).

First, there was no real discussion of how Ms. Huffington expects the conversations in this group blog to develop. Do they envision celebrities entering into a discourse with each other by responding to each other’s posts (I’m thinking of how this plays out on existing group blogs like Many2Many)? This could make for some interesting interactions. Or are they actually going to allow commenting by the unwashed masses? There was no mention of commenting, and I have a sneaky suspicion that they don’t want the rest of us to join in on the parade.

Secondly, there seems to be a plan in place to syndicate the content from this site to other news sources/Web sites. Sounds to me like they are not, therefore, planning on making this content available through “open” RSS syndication. Or else, I could potentially syndicate their content on my own site–for free!

In any case, it’s a site to watch. . .