A brief history of the Huffington Post|
Started in May 2005, the Huffington Post was co-founded by Arianna Huffington and former AOL executive Kenneth Lerer. Huffington and Lerer aimed to position it as the liberal response to Matt Drudge's Drudge Report, the popular conservative news site.
Originally, the site drew on celebrities and high-powered friends, soliciting early contributions from those such as Larry David, Diane Keaton and Alec Baldwin. The site later opened its doors to a much larger audience from across the political and cultural spectrum. None of the bloggers that contributed to the site were paid, but many thousands of posts were contributed, and the site became a pioneer at encouraging writers to work online for free in exchange for the potential for wide exposure.
At the same time, the Huffington Post built its speed and strength as a news "aggregator," seeking out items from thousands of sites across the Web and posting links to articles that fit its left-of-center editorial approach. Because the Huffington Post has often borrowed and reposted portions of articles from other outlets, it has been criticized for luring traffic away from traditional news outlets and contributing to an environment in which online news has been less profitable than the news business had hoped.
But the site demonstrated that collecting headlines from many sources can be a service that many readers appreciate, as it helps them sift through the many outlets of online news. Since the Huffington Post was established, many other sites have started to aggregate news in technology, media, sports and other topics, leading industry of news aggregation has risen and prospered.
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