Arianna: The Huffington Post is not a ‘lefty’ publication anymore

By Stephen C. Webster

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Arianna Huffington revealed a bit of news that's not likely to show up on The Huffington Post's front page any time soon: the site is no longer "lefty" in its political bent.

That will likely come as a surprise to the massive audience of Democrats and liberals The Huffington Post has attracted over the years, who've turned the site into a powerful voice for progressive values and one of the largest online publications going.

Speaking to New York Times reporter Andrew Goldman, Huffington said that for the last three years she has been walking the post-partisan talk.

"The tag line that we’ve used a lot is 'Beyond left and right,'" she reportedly said.

The Times' writer fired back, suggesting that she was "trying to tell me that Smurfs aren’t blue" by claiming that The Huffington Post was not founded as a "lefty" publication.

"I’m just telling you that it is very clear that we have progressive views, but to call everything we’re doing lefty — it misses the whole point that American policy needs to be redefined beyond left and right," she reportedly said. "It’s a completely obsolete view of politics."

"Still, I’m amazed you’re trying to tell me that The Huffington Post wasn’t started as a lefty blog?" Goldman asked.

"I’m not trying to tell you anything," she reportedly replied. "I’m telling you things. I’m not trying, O.K.?"

The interviewer also claimed that "salacious," "boob-related" posts on Huffington's front page tend to get his clicks more than their original reporting -- a point Arianna said was "really a shame."

The published text of Huffington's interview was "condensed and edited," according to a tag below the piece.

Huffington has of late been feuding with Bill Keller, the Times' executive editor, who recently compared her business practices to "Somali piracy."

The Huffington Post has significantly more readers than The New York Times.

But in recent months Huffington has been under fire from liberals and progressives, namely due to AOL's announcement that it was purchasing the site and making Arianna the editor-in-chief of its new Huffington Post Media Group, under which all their editorial content now falls.

Some 900 of AOL's global employees were let go after the Huffington Post purchase, representing about 20 percent of its workforce. The majority were in back-office operations in India.

AOL reportedly paid $315 million for the site, sparking an outcry from a group of unpaid Huffington Post contributors who demanded to share in the proceeds.

That was a sore spot for many writers, who've targeted Huffington's business model of not paying most contributors as a factor leading to the decline of journalism. Numerous writers and a swath of readers evenopenly quit the site in protest, insisting that the failure to pay most contributors was a factor leading to the decline of journalism.

Challenged on this point by the Times, Huffington pushed back, saying there's no evidence to support claims that the site has negatively affected journalism.

Even after all that, Huffington came under heavy criticism yet again recently when a post by controversial right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart landed on their front page.

They defended the move, noting that it attracted an enormous number of page views, but later announced that Breitbart's posts wouldn't appear on the front page again after he made negative comments about former Obama appointee Van Jones to a different outlet.

Huffington’s partner at AOL a ‘conservative’ who gave to GOP candidate: report

By Eric W. Dolan

Progressive fans of the Huffington Post aren't too happy about the site being acquired by America On-Line. Now, they may have another reason to lament the purchase.

A source close to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, a former Google executive hired in 2009, toldBusiness Insider that while he "calls himself a libertarian," Armstrong is in fact "one of the most conservative people around."

Armstrong's personal politics were largely unclear due to a lack of public statements. He could not be reached for comment on this story and a message left with AOL's corporate relations department went unreturned at time of this story's publication.

Armstrong has also donated to a number of politicians including New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, and according to records available online he also gave to Republican Thomas Herrmann in his 2010 run for Congress in Connecticut. Armstrong's wife has also donated to Republican causes, Insider added.

Herrmann dropped out of his congressional bid mid-way through the local Republican party's primary.

The Internet provider, which has been steadily losing subscribers for years, has been trying to re-brand itself as a content provider by launching sites such as the local news site Patch and and the citizen-journalism site Seed. In addition, AOL owns numerous other sites, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, StyleList, and more.

"Our motto right now is 'great content with great ads,'" Armstrong said on PBS's NewsHour Monday. "We see the internet needing to have a cleanup of how it looks and feels in the next progression of it. It hasn't changed much in the last 15 years."

AOL agreed to purchase The Huffington Post for $315 million, approximately $300 million of which will be paid in cash and $15 million in stock.

An informal survey of 500 Huffington Post commenters conducted by The Daily Beast found that 81 percent opposed the acquisition while only 19 percent expressed some optimism about it.

"We made HuffPost and we are being abandoned," one commenter wrote. "They will aim for the center. That’s where the big money is."

Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post's co-founder and editor-in-chief, has been trying to downplay the importance of partisan politics after the announcement.

"We don't see ourselves as left," Huffington told Politico. "And I think it’s one area where news consumers are ahead of the media, because they know that continuing to see everything that’s happening as a right-left issue is missing what’s happening, and is also making it much harder for us to be properly informed."

AOL has also agreed to create the Huffington Post Media Group, which will put Huffington in charge of all the company's editorial content.

Huffington said her website will continue after the acquisition "on the same path" it has been for the last six years, although now much faster.

"This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us," she added.

Huffington was married to oil millionaire Michael Huffington, a close Republican friend of the Bush family, who represented California in US House of Representatives in the 1990s and unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate in 1994.

The couple divorced in 1997, and in 1998 Michael Huffington revealed that he was bisexual.

Following her divorce, Huffington, who used to campaign for her husband as a staunch religious conservative, switched to liberalism.

She launched The Huffington Post in 2005, shortly after Raw Story began its work, pitching the site as an alternative to conservative news websites like the Drudge Report.