The Huffington Post
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Private |
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| Genre | News |
| Founded | May 2005 |
| Founder | Arianna Huffington Kenneth Lerer |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, USA |
| Key people | Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief Betsy Morgan, Chief Executive Officer Roy Sekoff, Editor |
| Owner | Arianna Huffington Kenneth Lerer |
| Employees | 60 |
| Slogan | "The Internet Newspaper: News, Blogs, Video, Community" |
| Website | www.huffingtonpost.com |
| Alexa rank | 449[1] |
| Type of site | News & blogging |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available in | English, German, Spanish |
| Launched | May 9, 2005 |
| Current status | Active |
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The Huffington Post is an American liberal news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, featuring various news sources and columnists.[2] The site, often referred to as HuffPost or HuffPo, 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 liberal alternative to more conservative news aggregators like the Drudge Report, and has expanded to cover news of politics and many other things.[3]
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[edit] 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 celebrity contributors from politics, journalism, business, and entertainment, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Heather Robinson, Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Saskia Sassen, John Cusack, and Bill Maher. The Huffington Post publishes scoops of current news stories, links to selected prominent news stories, and provides 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.[4][5] 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.[6]
A comprehensive list of contributors to the The Huffington Post blog can be found in its alphabetical Bloggers Index.
[edit] Traffic statistics
According to Nielsen NetRatings, Huffington Post had 8.9 million unique visitors in February, 2009 (by way of comparison, the right-leaning Drudge Report had 3.4 million unique visitors).[7]
[edit] 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[8] | ||
In August 2006, The Huffington Post announced that Softbank Capital would invest $5 million in the site, which had grown considerably in popularity in only a year, to help expand it.[9] 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."[10]
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 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.[11]
[edit] Awards
- The HuffingtonPost.com was named among the 25 Best Blogs of 2009 by Time Magazine.[12]
- 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[13] for political commentary published on the site.[14]
- The Huffington Post is ranked the most powerful blog in the world by The Observer.[15]
[edit] Controversies, errors, and questioning sources
- 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. Conservative commentator and longtime detractor 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."[16][17] 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.[18]
- 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.[19]
- The Huffington Post has been criticized by several science bloggers for including articles by supporters of complementary and alternative medicine and anti-vaccine activists.[20][21].
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/huffingtonpost.com
- ^ Kurtz, Howard (July 9, 2007). "A Blog That Made it Big". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/AR2007070801213.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
- ^ "The Huffington Post". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192975/The-Huffington-Post. Retrieved on 2009-03-03.
- ^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/off-the-bus/
- ^ "Get Off the Bus : CJR". www.cjr.org. http://www.cjr.org/feature/get_off_the_bus.php. Retrieved on 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/
- ^ "Tina's vanity play - Crain's New York Business". www.crainsnewyork.com. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090329/SMALLBIZ/303299980. Retrieved on 2009-04-14.
- ^ "Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Explosive Growth at Independent Political Blogs and News Sites this Election Season". comScore. http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2525. Retrieved on 2008-10-28.
- ^ "The Huffington Post Announces $25 Million In Funding" (pdf). http://www.softbank.com/pages/HP_Oak%20_120108.pdf. Retrieved on 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
- ^ [http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1879276_1879279_1879212,00.html
- ^ 49th Southern California Journalism Award Winners
- ^ Huffington Post page for Bennet Kelley.
- ^ "The world's 50 most powerful blogs". The Observer. 2008-03-09. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs. Retrieved on 2008-09-23.
- ^ O'Reilly, Bill (February 21, 2008). "Hate Speech and the 'Net". BillOReilly.com. http://www.billoreilly.com/newslettercolumn?pid=22771. Retrieved on 2008-05-04.
- ^ "Bill O’Reilly: Arianna Huffington Is a Bad, Bad Girl Who Needs to Be Punished". New York Magazine. February 22, 2008. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/02/bill_oreilly_arianna_huffingto.html. Retrieved on 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
- ^ simon Owens: Science bloggers challenge credibility of Huffington Post “wellness” editor
- ^ Steven Novella: The Huffington Post’s War On Science
