We interrupt our regularly scheduled list of recommended reading for writers to bring you more reactions to AOL’s deal to buy Huffington Post for $315 million in cash and stock, a deal that would make Arianna Huffington the company’s new head of content.

There’s a lot of “what does this mean” posts about the deal floating around, but I’m focusing on those that pertain specifically to writers and bloggers.

They are:

The Politics of the New Huffington Post at AOL (Jay Rosen’s PressThink) – From the esteemed industry pundit and New York University journalism professor.

How The Huffington Post Really Works (In Case You Were Wondering) (HuffPo) – One friend and fellow journalist called this a “pompous, self-righteous, but still informative post.” Read and decide for yourself.

This week in review: AOL’s big HuffPost buy (Nieman Journalism Lab) – By far the most comprehensive list of what everyone is saying about the deal.

AOL-HuffPo: Arianna and the Free Blog Economy (PaidContent)

AOL (Heart) HuffPo. The Loser? Journalism (Los Angeles Times) – Tim Rutten op-ed and winner of the best quote about the deal to date:

The Huffington Post is a brilliantly packaged product with a particular flair for addressing the cultural and entertainment tastes of its overwhelmingly liberal audience. To grasp its business model, though, you need to picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.

Guess who the slaves are? That’s right – you, me and anyone else who writes for HuffPo for free.

I’d put out a call to writers and editors on LinkedIn asking for names of industry folks I should include. But instead of news industry luminaries, I kept getting social media trailblazers. Wait a minute, I wanted to say, you don’t understand – social media isn’t the same as online news.

Then I started using Twitter. It didn’t take long to figure out that for the people who hang out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other online networks the social media hotdogs and digital media trendsetters are one in the same. They’re the ones people friend, follow and read. They’re the ones broadcasting the news of a US Airways plane going down in the Hudson River and Barack Obama’s inauguration  – regardless of who they are, where they are, their day job, their background or experience.

That meant I had to rethink my definition of trendsetter.

Here’s what I came up with. It’s totally subjective and different from what I would have picked six month ago, and probably what I’d pick six months from now. When possible, I’ve linked their names to their Twitter IDs or websites.

The Old School

• Bill Keller - Executive editor of the New York Times, charged with bringing the Grey Lady into the 21st century. Appointed paper’s first social media editor earlier this week.
• Jonathan Miller – Former AOL chief recently hired by Rupert Murdoch to run News Corp.’s digital interests, including MySpace and Hulu (minus the Wall Street Journal).
• Russ Stanton – Los Angeles Times editor. Figuring out a way how to stay relevant – and solvent – in the Internet age.
• Dean Singleton – Head of MediaNews Group, which owns the Denver Post and 99 other media properties, and leader of the charge to help newspapers monetize the Web.

The New Wave

• Tina Brown – Proprietress of The Daily Beast, a cross between the Conde Nast glossies she used to edit and a daily politics and gossip column.
• Arianna Huffington – HuffPost founder; gadfly turned new media publisher.
• Hyperlocal news bloggers – NeighborsGo, NewzJunky, SealBeachDaily.com, WestSeattleBlog, Neighborhood Notes, the list goes on and on
• Josh Marshall – Creator of Talking Points Memo, political blog that won a George Polk Award in 2008 for reporting on the firings of US attorneys.
• Paul Steiger – Former WSJ managing editor and current editor in chief at ProPublica, another high-profile online-only news outfit doing original investigative journalism on a non-profit basis.

The Professors

• Jeff Jarvis – J-school prof at City University of New York, Buzz Machine blogger, author of What Would Google Do? and former magazine and newspaper reporter, columnist and editor.
• Jay Rosen – NYU journalism prof, PressThink blogger and director of NewAssignment.Net, “an experiment in open-source reporting.”
• Sree Sreenivasan – Tech evangelist and professor at Columbia Journalism School, know for his extensive new media workshops.

The Promoters

• Seth Godin – Author, viral marketer extraordinaire, quipster.
• Guy Kawasaki – Entrepreneur, author, social media guru, proprietor of AllTop “online magazine rack” and blogger at How to Change the World. On Twitter at @guykawasaki.
• Peter Shankman – PR guy and founder of Help a Reporter Out crowdsourcing service for reporters.

The Pundits

• Paul Gillin – Social media expert, author and chronicler of newspaper hard times at Newspaper Deathwatch.
• Mark Glaser – Columnist for PBS MediaShift, “Your guide to the digital media revolution.”
• Alan Mutter – Newsman turned venture capitalist and blogger at Reflections of a Newsosaur.
• Jeremiah Owyang – Forrester Research social media analyst.

The Tech Geeks

• Chris Brogan – Mr. Social Media. Read and learn.
• Matt Mullenweg – Founding developer of WordPress blogging software, used by newspapers such as the New York Times, and head of WordPress’ parent company, Automattic.
• Dipchand “Deep” Nishar – Former Google exec who became LinkedIn’s v.p. of products in early December and has since rolled out a bevy of service upgrades.
• Darren Rowse – The Aussie blogging mastermind behind ProBlogger.
• Robert Scoble – Uber tech geek. Former Microsoft tech evangelist and Fast Company videographer blogging at Scobleizer.com.
• Biz Stone and Evan Williams – Co-founder and CEO of Twitter respectively. Reportedly turned down a $500 million buy out offer from Facebook earlier this year.

Know other new media pioneers I should include? Leave a comment. If I get enough I’ll re-post an expanded list.

HuffPost invests in investigative news – Everybody’s favorite we-don’t-pay-contributors news aggregator Website is turning over a new leaf, big time. The The Huffington Post is launching an investigative news team with a $1.75 million starter budget and advice from well-known online news guru and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen. The Huffington Post Investigative Fund will make its work available “for any publication or Website to publish at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post,” Rosen says.

DIY publishing – Magazine you used to write for folded? Why not start your own. Computer giant HP has a new service called MagCloud that lets an indie publisher email .pdf files it will print on the same type of glossy stock high-end magazine use for only 20 cent a page, using outsourcers to do that actual printing and distribution. This New York Times article calls the service “publishing’s equivalent to YouTube.”

Twitter media database – With Twitter growing a reported 30 percent a month, new tools are popping up all the time to help find what or who you’re looking for on the service. One of the newest is a sharable database of freelancers and other writers on Twitter. If you’re not on it already, add your name here.

Portland TV personalities on Twitter – Oregon Media Insiders blogger Lynn Siprelle names names in this rundown of which local TV stations rock Twitter and which don’t.

Nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks that – Portland’s best-known punk cabaret singer and entertainer extraordinaire Storm Large opened her one-woman show, “Crazy Enough,” this week. The former reality TV star (the long-since cancelled Rockstar: Supernova) opened up about the show, her life and her creative process in a story and Q&A in today’s Oregonian. On writing, Large says: “Most of the time it’s miserable and you’re just thinking, ‘This sucks! No one’s gonna like this!’”

WordCount Live and in Person – I’ll be talking about the different ways small businesses are using social media as part of a panel discussion at Shop Symposium/09, on Monday, April 6, at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. If you’re going, be sure to track me down and say hi.