Huffington Post Going Local, Raising New Funding

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 20, 2008 - 8:16am.

London - Left-leaning political news blog Huffington Post plans to expand into local news across the U.S., and is pursuing a third round of venture capital to help fund the initiative, founder Arianna Huffington said at a conference hosted by U.K. newspaper the Guardian.

The local news expansion will launch with Chicago and eventually cover dozens of cities, aggregating local news, sports, crime, arts and business news from local sources as well as bloggers.

"We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began," Huffington said.

"[Huffington Post political editor] Tom Edsell has been mentoring a small team of young reporters who have done a great job breaking news through the election cycle. We are working on our third round of financing and a lot of money raised will go to expanding that reporting team."

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/2lvk2 (Guardian.co.uk)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Published in DMW Daily, June 20, 2008

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Comments

Huffington's local play could be the Craig's list of editorial

Submitted by John Wilpers (not verified) on June 22, 2008 - 5:35am.

This is not a drill.

Backfence was a drill. And, although they're still around, Topix, YourStreet and Outside.in don't present the kind of threat to newspapers that Arianna does.

Ask a random sample of folks if they've heard of any of the above. I'd wager a couple of pints that no one outside of the newspaper industry has a clue who they are.

Ask a random sample of folks if they have heard of the Huffington Post. Between three and seven million people go there every month, depending on which measurement you believe.

This could be the Craig's List of editorial.

But it's not too late. Newspapers can still beat her to the punch by inviting the best local bloggers into their tent (both the website AND the newspaper). And not in just an index, but incorporate them in the sections they're writing about.

Newspapers have a HUGE advantage over Arianna. They distribute tens or even hundreds of thousands of what are, in effect, promotional fliers for their websites and the content therein. She has nothing like that.

I write more about this on my blog. — John Wilpers