Arianna Huffington visited Israel recently to attend the Garage Geeks conference in Holon. Her attendance at the event was partially a search for technology for her news site the "Huffington Post", considered one of the most successful contemporary Internet news sites.
Huffington said that she has wanted to visit to Israel ever since she was a child growing up in Greece. Three years ago, she met Yossi Vardi at a Digital, Life, Design (DLD) Conference in Germany, after which the visit to Israel was only a matter of time. It is not only personal curiosity that brought here. "We're seeking technological partners for integration on our website. It's necessary for the next stage of our growth," she said.
Garage Geeks is a place where usually only tech people gather. However, the present conference also attracted a different target audience: bloggers, journalists, and content creators, who came to hear the most successful ambassador of the new journalism.
"Huffington Post's" first investors included the investment arm of Softbank, which invested $5 million. Oak Investment Partners later led the news site's first financing round. "Huffington Post" raised a further $25 million a year ago.
"Globes": Do you have plans for an IPO?
Ariana Huffington: "There is no such plan on the agenda right now."
Huffington held the first financing round so that her blog could become an around-the-clock business. The news site's staff increased accordingly, from six to its current 75.
Huffington has the patience to touch everyone, according to Vardi, who hosted her visit. At Garage Geeks, she made the rounds, shook hands, and distributed business cards, demonstrating an interest in every blogger interested in her insights on the future of journalism as she tried to persuade them to write for the "Huffington Post". (The news site has two available positions for those interested: night news editor (New York time), and technology writer.)
Huffington sees the ideal online journalism model including a profit component, but she does not believe in the models that Rupert Murdoch is trying to promote - that of micro-payments or subscription fees. On the contrary.
Huffington says, “I don’t believe that the future will be subscriptions to online newspapers, except in a very strong niche, like pornography. There should be open media, so the future profits model should be based on advertising. We’ve barely scraped the surface of what this field can offer.”
Beyond this, Huffington has other advice. “We must learn to disengage. That will be the next big thing. I sit with people for dinner, and they have to look at their Blackberries every minute. We have to disengage in order to engage to ourselves,” she says.
The "Huffington Post"'s formula includes core news reports, especially about US politics, accompanied by coverage of business, media, fashion, and even sleep disorders. Each desk combines new and old media, in other words, regular news reports alongside columns, articles, and blogs by celebrities, and Twitter updates. The latter was a good means of covering the post election demonstrations in Iran a few months ago. Many live reports from Twitter and individuals' blogs were filtered, adapted, and submitted to readers in clear and convenient format.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 30, 2009
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