Arianna Huffington announced her decision to leave The Huffington Post, the eponymous web media outlet she founded eleven years ago, earlier this month. Her exit will allow her to focus on her new health and wellness start-up company, Thrive Global. An offshoot from her Thrive campaign, Thrive Global grew from Huffington's storied self-care renaissance following an exhaustion-triggered collapse in 2007, when the businesswoman/editor-in-chief fainted in her office, breaking her cheekbone in the fall. Though her leave is considered abrupt by many, Huffington will remain in her current office at the Post until September. No replacement editor-in-chief has yet been announced as of yet.
Balancing the unique demands of the news industry in the age of social media revolution has been a goal for Huffington since the site's inception. Founded in 2005, The Huffington Post was a pioneer in internet news and media. It has built up a reputation as a fierce competitor, with stories written from an "unapologetically liberal worldview" according to Sydney Ember of The New York Times. It counts successfully expanding to a global audience and a Pulitzer as among its many achievements. Currently, nearly 50% of mobile readership is directed to the site through social media websites (but especially Facebook [NASDAQ: FB].) The Huffington Post has over 200 million individual visitor views per month, making it one of the prime online news sources in America.
In the beginning, the site distinguished itself through willingness to adapt to Internet trends. Eagerness to embrace trends was unheard of among older, entrenched companies. It innovated by engineering its headlines with keywords, allowing it to capitalize off Google's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) status as the universal middle-man between Internet consumers and their news. It was also one of the first to practice industrial aggregation in electronic media. Industrial aggregation is the act of having inexperienced writers summarize already published stories, in a cost-effective method that drastically increases content at a fraction of the price. However, this tactic often got The Huffington Post accused of intellectual theft.
In 2010, Huffington sought to broaden her reach by acquiring money needed to expand to the next level. She obtained $315 million dollars through a deal with the CEO of AOL (NYSE: AOL) Tim Armstrong, who offered her the funds in exchange for acquisition. After accepting, Huffington was put in charge of AOL's internet content. But it soon became evident that she was incompatible with the position. Her coworkers then noticed that her remarkable reputation for energy, daring, and a fanatical schedule did not translate into successful management in her new position. She acquired a reputation for having an inconstant newsroom presence, due to attending to her many, competing outside interests. She failed to gain and apply detailed knowledge that was needed to manage the disparate internet AOL properties under her control. This brought dissatisfaction among the AOL executives, such that eventually, they began brainstorming about the best way to strip Huffington of her managerial duties and exchange them for a ceremonial role.
When AOL was acquired by Verizon (NYSE: VZ) in May 2015, Huffington negotiated a new contract for herself and The Huffington Post. As a result, she was deemed editor-in-chief of a newly revamped site, now under Verizon's aegis.
The work done at an internet news company comes with unique difficulties. Huffington's employees work non-stop to catch live news updates before their competition. These attention-span consuming demands can cause workers at The Huffington Post to sacrifice a portion of their mental sanity--despite Huffington's well-known mental health and wellness campaign. Because of the non-stop work pace, the site has seen workers leaving in hordes, complaining of burnout. Many employees and former employees considered themselves underpaid, resorting to second jobs. The company has formally denied knowledge of these accusations.
Notably and controversially, The Huffington Post chose to hire bloggers without pay. Huffington's rationale: a globally read and recognized platform should be fair exchange for free labor. (Other web media outlets like Thought Catalog have caught onto this strategy.) The Huffington Post was also among the first to employ headline testing data-analysis to increase web traffic. By manipulating the publication's web interface, different headlines per news story could be shown to different viewers. Workers then gauged the number of clicks per headline, and chose the final headline based on which had gotten the most clicks.
Despite the promises of Thrive, reports of workplace toxicity at the Post's headquarters are rampant. Huffington's leadership is revered by some but reviled by others. Her workplace critics speak of Huffington's favoritism, paranoia and pettiness. Huffington refuses responsibility for these accusations, preferring to emphasize The Huffington Post office nap rooms, hammocks and meditation classes.
Throughout her tenure, Huffington has been criticized for many things, such as using her publication as a vehicle for her politics. More recently, critics have caught onto her ability to capitalize off both society's need for constant news, and its need to reprimand that very culture of perpetual stimulation. To some, Huffington's two-prong approach testifies to her savvy, and remarkable reputation. To others, it signals hypocrisy.
SOURCES:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/magazine/arianna-huffingtons-improbable-insatiable-content-machine.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/business/arianna-huffington-post.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/fashion/arianna-huffington-kobe-bryant-meditate.html?action=click&contentCollection=Media&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article