LABOR RELATIONS: Huffpo pays nothing to the bloggers and publications it “aggregates.” Huffington, 59, says her contributors should be pleased to get the exposure, and that other sites she points readers to should be happy to get the traffic. Very often, she’s right.

QUOTE: “I did not single-handedly kill newspapers. I had a lot of help from Craigslist.”

YEAR AHEAD: ↗ 89. Doug Morris Universal Music Group

LAST YEAR: 96.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Selling recorded music may be an awful business, but it’s one that Morris, 70, still dominates. Driven by hit acts such as Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, U2, Black Eyed Peas, and Kanye West, Universal stands alone atop the music charts, accounting for one-third of all albums sold.

__SHOULD BE PROUD OF:__Vevo, the soon-to-be-launched online music and video service to be run on the backs of Google and YouTube.

COOL FRIEND: Bono (among many other stars), who urged Morris to reach out to Google to help hatch Vevo.

SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED ABOUT: After shelling out $15 million last summer for rights to the Rolling Stones’ post-1971 catalogue, Morris has yet to sell 5,000 copies of the aging rockers’ records.

RUMOR HAS IT: The fact that Lucian Grainge, the head of Universal Music’s international business, recently bought a house in Connecticut has prompted speculation that the young executive is being readied to take over Morris’s job.

SIGNATURE MOVE: Throws the most exclusive—and most difficult to crash—Grammy Awards party, at the Palm in Los Angeles.

YEAR AHEAD: → 90. William McDonough William McDonough & Partners

__LAST YEAR:__71.

__STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST:__Known as the first eco-starchitect, the guru of green buildings and products consulted his cool buddy Brad Pitt on the “Make It Right” housing project for hurricane victims in New Orleans and teamed again with Pitt to help Kiehl’s create its Aloe Vera Biodegradable Liquid Body Cleanser, the first beauty item that McDonough’s product-design firm certified with its “Cradle to Cradle” seal of approval for eco-friendliness.

__SIDE JOBS:__He’s a professor at Stanford and a colleague of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s in VantagePoint Venture Partners, a $4.5 billion fund that invests in green technology.

HOLLYWOOD BONA FIDES: His book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, is a must-read for A-list eco-warriors such as Cameron Diaz, and he appeared in Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary The 11th Hour.

THORN IN HIS SIDE: A Fast Company article claiming that McDonough, 58, failed in his effort to build a model eco-village in rural northeast China.

YEAR AHEAD: ↗

Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein The Weinstein Company

LAST YEAR: 87.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The indie-film impresarios laid off two dozen employees, or 11 percent of their staff, in November. The upbeat buzz around their film of the Broadway musical Nine, by director Rob Marshall, whose Chicago won six Oscars, has been overshadowed by the news, leaked in June, that the Weinsteins had brought in a financial consultant that specializes in helping companies get out from under too much debt. (The company has around $500 million worth that matures in 2014.) A subsequent article in The New York Times, which laid out how the brothers accumulated the debt and lost sight of what they do best—turning Indie films onto mainstream audiences—bringing them to a do-or-die point in their long storied careers in the movie business, didn’t help matters. But the brothers got some much-needed good news a week later when Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterdsnabbed the top spot at the box office its first weekend in theaters, grossing more than $65 million worldwide.