In , Huffington annnounced her departure from The Huffington Post to launch Thrive Global, a start-up company dedicated to health and wellness.
She moved to Great Britain during her teens to study at the University of Cambridge, where she earned her master's in economics and became president of its famed debate organization, the Cambridge Union. She then set up shop in London and pursued writing. In , with Random House, she published her first book, The Female Woman, which looks at and critiques certain trends in women's liberation movements.
She followed that with the political-oriented work After Reason in Stassinopoulus moved to the United States in The following year, she released an acclaimed biography of one of the world's opera greats, Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend. In , she was able to plumb her ethnic roots with the work The Gods of Greece, which looked at the importance of ancient myths, and by the end of the decade she had also released a biography of Picasso.
Huffington was initially known for her conservative political views and commentary, and she made regular television appearances to support her standpoints. Beyond the obvious significance of that, in that you win the highest award in journalism for your efforts, which by the way magazines are not eligible for. But somehow The Huffington Post is, which is a sticking point with some magazine editors. John : Yeah, well, that argument has been made and not heard. Talk about what that meant to you personally and to your staff?
What does that say about what the mainstream traditional journalism community has decided about the state of blogging. It seems like a watershed event to me. Was it to you? Arianna : Yeah, it definitely was.
It was a great moment. We celebrated it here in the newsroom. It was a great moment because we had invested a lot both financially and emotionally in original journalism, in long investigative series.
We never saw any contradiction between doing that and also aggregating, and being a blogging platform. That made The Huffington Post plus engagement, which is over everything. It was a great basically testament to the fact that our original vision had reached a certain maturity and was validated. Talk about AOL. AOL obviously saw a lot of value in your business, they gave you a lot of money. John : AOL obviously saw a lot of value in your business, and in you.
They not only paid you a lot of money for the business, they brought you in to run a big part of their content business. AOL is a pretty [big] brand in its own self, as are you. Just talk about that. Arianna : The great thing for the Huffington Post was that we actually finally had the resources to grow in multiple areas that I wanted us to grow in at the same time, instead of sequentially. With AOL being a great parent company that basically within a few months, it was clear that the best model was for us to be left alone to run The Huffington Post.
Meet our objectives, stay within our budget, and then AOL would invest in the areas that we would decide were the biggest growth areas. They invested in HuffPost Live, which was a….
Arianna : Video TV series. They invested in growing internationally, so within the first two years we were in six countries. They invested in original journalism. We were able to…. John : That brings us to a really important question that we ask everyone, is the question of is there a viable model at scale for profitable news?
Is it long term scaleably profitable as a business? John : Shed some light on that. Are you profitable now on an operating basis? John : But are you in an investment mode or a profitable mode? Arianna : I think we are in investment mode in some areas like HuffPost Live, like international, and in profit mode in other areas.
But I absolutely believe, and the facts are here, that advertising is moving more and more online. Especially as advertisers want to engage more and more with their readers and social is becoming more important. John : But the value of digital advertising is declining. And your business is built entirely on digital advertising. Arianna : Right, although we definitely do the banner ads and the CPM measured advertising, the most profitable part of our advertising are sponsored content platforms.
I mentioned…. We have an impact section sponsored by Cisco, which actually won an advertising innovation award last week. We have an IBM section, we have a lot of sections like that which are all six figure deals. Or seven. Paul : Do you keep the editorial control? You talked about a church state, Chinese Wall model. One is, what do you think is the most significant lasting influence of the growth and development of The Huffington Post on the rest of the journalism industry?
I think…. Because if they had, they would have left no room for The Huffington Post to exist. They left a vacuum into which we stepped. The Huffington Post is doing more and more traditional journalism with investigative reporting, in multiple areas, and we just finished sending 26 reporters across America to write about the new poverty, the decline of the middle class.
All those things which…. John : Is this your book on steroids? This is taking each chapter…. John : My last question is take us five years out and tell us about Huffington Post and the journalism industry, the news industry, and you. Where is this headed? Arianna : Five years from now, we want to be in all the major countries in every major language. Arianna : Which is amazing for journalism, because we are covering the resignation of the Pope, and the new Pope, has been an incredible demonstration of what we can do because we have a great Italian team of editors.
Arianna : Entirely Italian. We both choose the editorial director. Paul : I have one last question. You can see some of the mainstream has gone to the paywall, or even some of the bloggers are trying to go to a leaky paywall as they call it. Do you think both models are going to work? Arianna : No, I think both models will work depending on the brand. You have to make trade offs. The New York Times, actually they run great ads for subscriptions. We were able to overtake them in unique visitors, I think partly because they are now emphasizing the paywall.
There are trade offs. People are used to paying for it. What are you going to do about that? Arianna : It allows for social and social sharing, et cetera. But there are trade offs. Arianna : I think it was always a combination. I think that….
Arianna : We still are. When we launched The Huffington Post splash, which is now a bit of a trademark…Yeah. Arianna : I want history to know that I interrupted this interview twice to talk to my daughter, which is my one rule that everybody here knows. Arianna : I just want to make it clear in this world of women trying to drive our careers and parenthood, that parenthood comes first.
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John : Where were you at the time and doing what? John : You liked the fact that it talked back? John : Like? Arianna : Yeah. John : Then you would… Arianna : Post it. John : Your vision was more like a salon?
John : This is after you started? That was after we started. John : When did you start the Huffington Post? Paul : A website. Arianna : It was actually great. We did, we had… John : In terms of doing away with polls? John : Was it substantial, or was it just a…? It was… John : Mostly people you knew, or…?
I had asked my… Paul : See it on print… Arianna : Yes, exactly. Arianna : Drudge was pure aggregation, and others. John : He just aggregated. We combined aggregation… John : This is Drudge plus? She then set up shop in London and pursued writing.
In , with Random House, she published her first book, The Female Woman, which looks at and critiques certain trends in women's liberation movements. She followed that with the political-oriented work After Reason in Stassinopoulus moved to the United States in after a stalled romance in London with writer Bernard Levin. The following year, she released an acclaimed biography of one of the world's opera greats, Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend. In , she was able to plumb her ethnic roots with the work The Gods of Greece , which looked at the importance of ancient myths, and by the end of the decade she had also released a biography of Picasso.
In , Stassinopoulis wed Michael Huffington, a secretary within the U. Department of Defense, and the couple had two children. Michael Huffington earned a seat as a Republican in the U.
House of Representatives between and , and Arianna aided him in his subsequent Senate campaign, although he lost. The two would divorce in Huffington was initially known for her conservative political views and commentary, and she made regular television appearances to support her standpoints. But she eventually began to embrace more left-leaning platforms, including ecological activism and corporate reform. In , Huffington ran on the Independent ticket against Arnold Schwarzenegger for the California governorship, but she withdrew from campaigning to throw her support behind thwarting the recall vote aimed at Governor Gray Davis.
In , Huffington launched the online site The Huffington Post , co-founding the platform with Kenneth Lerer and becoming its editor-in-chief.
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