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| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
| Type of site | News & Blogging |
| Available in | English, German, Spanish |
| Founded | May 2005 |
| Headquarters | New York, NY, USA |
| Owner | Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer |
| Founder(s) | Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer |
| Key people | Arianna Huffington |
| Employees | 43 |
| URL | www.huffingtonpost.com |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | May 9, 2005 |
| Current status | Active |
The Huffington Post (often referred to on the Internet as HuffPost or HuffPo) is an American liberal news website and aggregated weblog founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, featuring various news sources and columnists. The site covers a wide range of topics, including sections devoted to politics, entertainment, media, living, business, and the green movement. The Huffington Post was launched on May 9, 2005 as a commentary outlet and alternative to conservative news aggregators like the Drudge Report, and has expanded to cover news of politics and many other things.
Contributors
In addition to columns by Huffington and a core group of contributors (such as Harry Shearer, John Conyers, and Rosie O'Donnell) and Roy Sekoff, Founding Editor, the Huffington Post has featured notable celebrity contributors from politics, journalism, business, and entertainment (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Norman Mailer, John Cusack, and Bill Maher). The Huffington Post publishes scoops of current news stories, otherwise providing links to selected prominent news stories, providing a liberal counterpoint to sites such as The Drudge Report. Compared to other left-wing blogs such as the expertise-heavy Znet or the long-established Daily Kos, The Huffington Post offers both news commentary and coverage. The comment section is home to discussions on politics, religion, and world affairs.
The Huffington Post's OffTheBus is a citizen-powered online news organization that is a collaboration between The Huffington Post, NYU, and Jay Rosen's NewsAssignment.Net. The Huffington Post's FundRace is a website that tracks contributions to the presidential campaigns and includes a mapping feature that shows contributions broken down by city, neighborhood, and block.
A comprehensive list of contributors to the The Huffington Post blog can be found in its alphabetical Bloggers Index.
Investment
| Selected Stand-Alone Political Blogs & News Sites | ||
|---|---|---|
| Site | Unique Audience Sept. 2008 | |
| huffingtonpost.com | 4,545,000 | |
| politico.com | 2,362,000 | |
| drudgereport.com | 2,059,000 | |
| Source: comScore Media Metrix | ||
In August 2006, it was announced that Softbank Capital would invest $5 million in the online news site, which had grown considerably in popularity in only a year, to help expand it. Plans included hiring more staff to update the site 24 hours a day, hiring in-house reporters, and a multimedia team to do video reports. Alan Patricof's Greycroft Partners also invested. The news marked the site's first "first round of venture capital funding."
The site now has invested in Vlogging, or video blogging, with many of the site contributors contributing via video, and capturing clips in the media and posting them on the site.
In November 2008, Huffington Post completed a $15 million fundraising from investors. The money will finance expansion including more investigative journalism and the provision of local news across the United States.
Awards
The Huffington Post won the 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards for Best Politics Blog.
Huffington Post contributor Bennet Kelley was awarded the Los Angeles Press Club's 2007 Southern California Journalism Award for Online Commentary for political commentary published on the site.
It is ranked the most powerful blog in the world by The Observer.
Controversy
Fox News television anchor Bill O'Reilly, as well as conservative media watchdog MRC, have brought attention to the Huffington Post hosting controversial statements on its blogs, and Arianna Huffington's initial refusal to remove them. Some examples include various independent authors sharply criticizing Americans support of the War in Iraq, accusing Dick Cheney of terrorizing enemies abroad and innocent citizens at home, and criticizing the Bush administration for indiscriminate spending.
Perhaps the most controversial comments were made in mid-February 2008, after former First Lady Nancy Reagan fell at her California home. Negative comments about the then-86-year-old former first lady were posted in the public comment section of the website by members of the public. Commentator Bill O'Reilly opined, "Apparently, Arianna Huffington, the woman who runs the site, has mixed views on publishing hate speech. Ms. Huffington has the power to remove this trash immediately, but she chooses not to." Arianna Huffington said that hateful comments are not tolerated and are taken down as soon as they come to the attention of the blog's moderators.
The Huffington Post inadvertently linked to an altered youtube video clip of John Gibson, which voiced over Gibson's voice. The video was altered by John Sanders, the technology reporter at WBAL-TV, who was later fired.
References
- Kurtz, Howard (July 9, 2007). "A Blog That Made it Big". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-11-25.
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"The Huffington Post (Web site) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2009-03-03.
was created to provide a liberal counterpart to the Drudge Report, a news and commentary Web site that was widely viewed as conservative.
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/off-the-bus/
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"Get Off the Bus : CJR". www.cjr.org. Retrieved 2009-03-07.
OffTheBus (OTB) was a citizen-powered campaign news site co-sponsored by The Huffington Post and Jay Rosen's NewAssignment, at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
- http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/
- "Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Explosive Growth at Independent Political Blogs and News Sites this Election Season". comScore. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
- "The Huffington Post Announces $25 Million In Funding" (pdf). Retrieved 2009-03-07.
- Softbank Capital invests $5 mln in Huffington Post, Reuters, August 7, 2006, accessed October 18, 2006
- Business big shot: Arianna Huffington, online entrepreneur The Times November 21, 2008
- 49th Southern California Journalism Award Winners
- Huffington Post page for Bennet Kelley.
- "The world's 50 most powerful blogs". The Observer. 2008-03-09. Retrieved 2008-09-23.
- Huffington’s House of Horrors
- ^ O'Reilly, Bill (February 21, 2008). "Hate Speech and the 'Net". BillOReilly.com. Retrieved 2008-05-04.
- "Bill O'Reilly: Arianna Huffington Is a Bad, Bad Girl Who Needs to Be Punished". New York Magazine. February 22, 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-06.
- O'Reilly Needs to Enroll in "Understanding the Internet 101"
- http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-fired-reporter-0224,0,2655073.story WBAL-TV fires reporter over prank