Sunday, 20 May 2012
fullscreen
company nameThe Huffington Post
company logo
parentAOL
genreNews
foundationMay 2005
founderArianna Huffington Kenneth Lerer Jonah Peretti
location cityNew York City, New York
location countryUnited States
key peopleArianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief Tim Armstrong, Chief Executive Officer Roy Sekoff, editor
num employees200+
company slogan"The Internet Newspaper: News, Blogs, Video, Community"
urlhuffingtonpost.com
website typeNews & blogging
languageEnglish
registrationOptional
launch dateMay 9, 2005
current statusActive
alexa 90 () }}

''The Huffington Post'' is an American news website and content aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring various news sources and columnists which lean liberal. The site offers coverage of politics, media, business, entertainment, living, style, the green movement, world news, and comedy, and has news, blogs, and original content. ''The Huffington Post'' was launched on May 9, 2005, as a commentary outlet and alternative to news websites like the ''Drudge Report''. On February 7, 2011, AOL acquired ''The Huffington Post'' for US$315 million making Arianna Huffington editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group.

History

''The Huffington Post'' was founded by Arianna Huffington in May 2005, and launched a few days later on May 9. In 2008, the site launched its first local version, ''HuffPost Chicago''; ''HuffPost New York'' launched in June, 2009, ''HuffPost Denver'' launched on September 15, 2009, and ''HuffPost Los Angeles'' launched on December 2, 2009. ''The Huffington Post'' has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site each month. Prior to ''The Huffington Post'', Huffington hosted a website called Ariannaonline.com. Her first foray into the Internet was a website called Resignation.com, which called for the resignation of President Bill Clinton and was a rallying place for conservatives opposing Clinton. The Huffington Post launched its first international edition, ''HuffPost Canada'', on May 26, 2011. On the 6 July 2011 the ''Huffington Post UK'' launched its UK edition.

Contributors

In addition to columns by Arianna Huffington and a core group of contributors such as John Conyers, Harry Shearer, Jeff Pollack, and Roy Sekoff, ''The Huffington Post'' has over 9,000 bloggers—from politicians and celebrities to academics and policy experts—who contribute on a wide range of topics.

Celebrities are allowed to post blogs on the site, and a number have opted to do so over the years. In many cases, such as that of Robert Reich, content is cross-posted among multiple sites.

The site also publishes columns by specialists in a wide range of fields such as Alice Waters on food, Doctor Harold Katz on dental health, Suzie Heumann on sex, Diane Ravitch on education, Jacob M. Appel on ethics, Howard Steven Friedman on statistics and politics, Auren Hoffman on business and politics, and Jon LaPook on medicine, and publishes scoops of current news stories and links to selected prominent news stories. Unlike other left-leaning blogs such as ''Znet'' or ''Daily Kos'', ''The Huffington Post'' offers both news commentary and coverage.

''The Huffington Post's'' OffTheBus is a citizen-powered online news organization that is a collaboration between ''The Huffington Post'', New York University (NYU), and Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.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.

Investment

In August 2006, ''The Huffington Post'' announced that SoftBank Capital would invest $5 million in the site, which had grown 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 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, ''The Huffington Post'' completed $15 million fundraising from investors, to finance expansion including more journalism and the provision of local news across the United States.

On February 7, 2011, AOL announced it would acquire ''The Huffington Post'' for US$315 million. As part of the deal Arianna Huffington will become president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include ''The Huffington Post'' and existing AOL properties Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, and StyleList.

Criticism

''The Huffington Post'' has been criticized by several science bloggers, as well as online news sources, for including articles by supporters of alternative medicine and anti-vaccine activists and censoring rebuttals written by science bloggers before publishing.

Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, criticized ''The Huffington Post'' for allowing homeopathy proponent Dana Ullman to have a blog there:

: "Dana Ullman, a notorious homeopathy apologist, actually has a regular blog over at HuffPo. For those of us who follow such things, the start of his blog there marked the point of no return for the ''Huffington Post'' – clearly the editors had decided to go the path of Saruman and "abandon reason for madness." They gave up any pretense of caring about scientific integrity and became a rag of pseudoscience."

In February 2011, Visual Art Source, which had previously been cross-posting material from its website, went on strike against ''The Huffington Post''.

Since March 2011, the strike and the call to boycott ''The Huffington Post'' was joined and endorsed by the Huffington Post Union of Bloggers and Writers (HPUB), the National Writers Union (NWU) and the Newspaper Guild (TNG)

In April 2011, ''The Huffington Post'' was targeted with a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed in United States District Court in New York by Jonathan Tasini on behalf of thousands of uncompensated bloggers.

Awards

''The Huffington Post'' is 2010 People's Voice Winner in the 14th Webby Awards and is the Winner in Lead411's New York City Hot 125. The Huffington Post lost the 2010 Webby Award jury prize for Best Political Blog to Truthdig. ''The HuffingtonPost.com'' was named second among the 25 Best Blogs of 2009 by ''Time Magazine.''
  • ''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. ''The Huffington Post'' is ranked the most powerful blog in the world by ''The Observer''. ''The Huffington Post'' co-founder Arianna Huffington was named as number 12 in Forbes' first ever list of the Most Influential Women In Media in 2009. She has also moved up to number 42 in the Guardian's Top 100 in Media List.

    References

    External links

  • The Huffington Post ''official site''
  • Why our writers are on strike against the Huffington Post, Bill Lasarow, ''The Guardian'', 5 March 2011
  • All the Aggregation That's Fit to Aggregate, Bill Keller, "The New York Times Magazine", 10 March 2011
  • Category:American blogs Huffinton Post, The Category:American political websites Category:News websites Category:Alternative media Category:American bloggers Category:Internet properties established in 2005 Category:2005 establishments in the United States Category:AOL

    ca:The Huffington Post de:The Huffington Post es:The Huffington Post eo:The Huffington Post fa:هافینگتن پست fr:The Huffington Post it:The Huffington Post he:הפינגטון פוסט nl:The Huffington Post ja:ハフィントン・ポスト pl:Huffington Post pt:The Huffington Post simple:The Huffington Post sh:The Huffington Post fi:The Huffington Post sv:The Huffington Post tr:The Huffington Post zh:赫芬顿邮报

    This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.



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