Community Corner

As Media Empire Grows, Huffington Looks To 'Unplug'

New president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group talks about media, local markets.

Dim backstage lights veiled Arianna Huffington's thin silhouette as she wrapped up a conference call on her Blackberry. “I have to go now,” she said before adding a few final words.

She sauntered over, seeming no longer concerned with the time, and handed me a copy of her recent book, On Becoming Fearless ... in Love, Work, and Life. She used my pen to inscribe, in long, wispy letters: “To Nicole, best wishes Arianna.”

As we walked behind the curtain at the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium, she briefly spoke of how Patch is connecting individuals with their local communities.

Now that Patch is part of The Huffington Post Media Group, Huffington told the audience that she hopes to digitize local expression by providing a free blogging platform to Patch towns and all other AOL properties. The details of how this new blogging platform will be implemented into Patch sites, she said, are in still in the works.

As she talks, Huffington seems excited. And she should. This past Monday, she finalized the $315 million merger of her well-known news website, The Huffington Post, with AOL, Inc., making her the new president and editor-in-chief of all AOL properties, including Patch. For several days, Huffington visited San Francisco and Palo Alto, introducing herself to the Patch and AOL teams while talking about the future. And after her lecture series in San Rafael, she would hop on a red eye to Manhattan for a 10 a.m. conference call.

“I wish someone could invent a GPS for the soul,” she told  some 1,900 people in the auditorium, so she would know when she was off-course and could readjust to allow time for rest. But in an age of new media, in which people are constantly consuming a 24-hour news cycle on mobile devices and computers, rest is not what comes to mind.

“We need to learn to unplug and uncharge,” she said. “I keep repeating it because I need to hear it.”

When The Huffington Post launched in May 2005, one of its goals was to create a community where people could express their passions. It began as a collection of blogs from Huffington’s well-connected list of writers and commentators. Since then, the site has grown to 26 sections, with 148 full-time staff writers and editors, 24/7 news aggregation, 28 million unique visitors per month and a large network of free bloggers.

Other media have criticized The Huffington Post’s approach to news coverage. New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote this past Thursday that aggregation contributes to what he called the “‘American Idol’-ization of news,” and that The Huffington Post is no more than a collection of “celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications.” Another common argument is that when content is free, quality suffers.

To Huffington, the point of her publication is to offer a little bit of everything—from the high-brow to the low-brow. But mistakes happen. When a blogger makes a mistake, editors request that blogger to either withdraw the post or correct the mistake within 24 hours, otherwise the blogger’s password is revoked.

Unlike the full-time staff writers at The Huffington Post, free bloggers write when they desire and leave when they want. “More people want to join the party than go home early—and for those who want to leave, the door is not locked,” Huffington said.

“Older media people don’t understand what’s happened,” she pointed out, adding that although she does not believe newspapers will disappear, her seven print subscriptions usually result in those papers collecting dust. Instead of passively watching the news in front of television sets, people are now talking back to news organizations via social media, blogs and comments.

Huffington sees her site as a place for bloggers to touch readers’ hearts and minds. She finds that many people want do this, regardless of money, and giving them a chance to do so permits them to participate in the news process, which could be vital to journalism’s survival.

“We need to move forward and build a great journalism enterprise,” she said. “The important thing is to save journalism—and not just save it but strengthen it.”


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