For emphasis

The American Journalism Review reveals how Arianna Huffington was able to lure Peter Goodman from the Times. It also reveals Goodman’s own self-loathing for taking the offer that was “too amazing to turn down.” So what did it? Freedom (and I’m sure the money wasn’t bad either).

Adding original content was a goal from the outset, Huffington says. So when the site became profitable last year, she took a dinner meeting with Peter Goodman — who says he was satisfied at the Times writing in-depth news features — as a chance to give him what he saw as an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Total freedom, as Goodman describes it. A chance to dig deep into the economic issues facing Americans left powerless by economic recession.

After he decided to join up, Goodman says “it was almost hard to get out of bed for a week. I thought, my God, this woman has described something that is too amazing to turn down, and yet I’m at this job where I’m doing serious, high-impact work at the greatest brand in American journalism.”

Goodman speaks highly of the Times (and of its executive editor, Bill Keller, who is not, as can be seen in a recent New York Times Magazine column, a big fan of Goodman’s new employer). But there were limitations. For instance, when a front-page story on predatory for-profit colleges generated hundreds of e-mails, Goodman wanted to do another story on the topic — but the paper had no place for it.

“My editors said, and I’m not criticizing them, ‘Well, we already hit the subject,’” Goodman says. “Arianna’s whole thing is, “This is the Web, let’s hit it again and again. If we’ve got another one, let’s hit it again.’”

So now Goodman has assigned a reporter to that beat full-time and has deployed his staff of about a dozen, some established journalists, some eager new recruits, to cover economics and business issues across the country, all with the idea of pursuing a story as long as it takes to tell it thoroughly.

Well played, Huffington. Well played.