Arianna Huffington leaving ‘The Huffington Post’
Founder, editor in chief says she has funding for new wellness media venture, Thrive Global
Arianna Huffington, founder of the pioneering digital news operation that bears her name, said Thursday she will step down as editor in chief of The
Huffington Post to start a new venture, ending her controversial reign at the liberal online news company.
Huffington, 66, has held talks in recent weeks with venture capitalists to fund her new media company, Thrive Global, which will launch in November and provide content and training seminars on wellness. Thrive closed a new round of funding, led by other co-founders of The Huffington Post, she said.
In a staff memo, Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, which owns The Huffington Post, said an interim editorial committee of other top editors will perform Arianna’s role for now.
“When I decided to create Thrive Global, I thought it would be possible to build a start-up and continue as editor in chief of The Huffington Post,” Huffington said in a statement. “Today, it’s clear that was an illusion. ... It became clear to me that I simply couldn’t do justice to both companies.”
Her departure creates a whopping void at The Huffington
Post, a news venture that had an immense impact on the way online newsrooms publish around the world. Founded in 2005 as a liberal alternative to the conservative news aggregator site The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post drew heavy criticism for re- packaging other news agencies’ stories with “clickbait” headlines and posting blogs written by unpaid contributors. But its tactics were widely imitated by other news start-ups and traditional media companies eager to boost online traffic. In recent years, The Huffing
ton Post began enlarging its staff to pursue original reporting and broadened its coverage. In 2012, it won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on wounded veterans.
In 2011, she and other shareholders of The Huffington Post sold it to AOL for about $315 million. She was then named president and editor-in-chief of the newly created Huffington
“Arianna is a visionary who built ‘The Huffington Post’ into a truly transformative news platform.” Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, which owns “The Huffington Post”
Post Media Group, which houses her site and other AOL digital news properties, such as Engadget, TechCrunch and MapQuest.
Her role and influence in the combined company have been questioned amid reports she and Armstrong were frequently at odds about the direction of the new media group. The management structure became more complicated when Verizon paid $4.4 billion to buy AOL last year. Verizon then expanded its media business by agreeing to pay $4.8 billion to buy Yahoo’s Web properties, including Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News.
Huffington stayed on after the Verizon-AOL deal closed, but signs that she was restless and ready for new ventures emerged in recent years.
In 2010, she gave a Ted Talk speech about the importance of sleep and wrote a book this year about the topic, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life,
One Night at a Time. Last year, she authored another book on well-being, Thrive: The Third
Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being,
Wisdom, and Wonder. The idea for a related start-up company soon followed.
Thrive Global’s Series A funding, its first significant round of raising funds, was led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, founded by Kenny Lerer and Eric Hippeau. Lerer and Hippeau have a long working relationship with Huffington. Lerer was co-founder of
The Huffington Post and Hippeau was its CEO when it was acquired by AOL. Other investors include Blue Pool Capital, Greycroft Partners, Bridgewater CEO Ray Dalio, Mohamed ElErian (formerly with PIMCO), NBA player Andre Iguodala and entrepreneur Sean Parker.