You forgot the /s somewhere in your sentence /s . In the age of bloggers AS journalists because paying real ones is what online media doesn't do (the Huffpo doesn't pay its contributors, nor its interns) , there is very little journalism left on the internet which is a paradox, considered we are drowned with "news" .
I'm fairly certain HuffPost does pay its interns. Bloggers are unpaid, but there's a fairly large newsroom on staff that produces much of the most viewed content.
I think `^` was a pinocchio nose -- implying a lie.
That is not the meaning of :^)
:^) indicates that a joke is being made. It's quite similar to TwitchTV's Kappa, if you know about that.
Kappa is actually quite an interesting phenomenon - the fluid state of meme-emoticons and the ebb and flow of their popularity in relation to seemingly unconnected events is a nuanced topic in its own right.