Arianna Huffington: Selling Out or Buying In?
In 2011, Arianna Huffington sold her popular media platform, Huffington Post, to AOL for $315 million. Not long after the sale was announced, The Guardian published an article titled "Arianna Huffington's AOL deal sparks accusations of a political sell out". Former Huffington Post bloggers and America's Newspaper Guild accused Huffington of making a fortune off of bloggers. Huffington's formally independent media empire consisted of content produced primarily by unpaid bloggers, who were willing to work without pay for a cause they believed in.
"After building a media empire based on unpaid writers and republishing the works of others... we are calling on Arianna Huffington to invest in quality journalism by sharing a portion of this fortune," said Bernie Lunzer, the president of the America's Newspaper Guild.
Huffington said that she would use the money generated from the content made by unpaid bloggers to hire young and fresh reporters to do hard-hitting investigations. Yet, Huffington's selling out betrayed the bloggers who dedicated unpaid labor to the site because she rejected the political, left-leaning image they had worked towards. After the sale, Huffington said that Huffington Post had no political ideology, and was more than a political website.
Furthermore, according to leaked documents, Huffington herself made $21 million off of the sale. The documents also state that Huffington Post had $5 million in cash on its balance sheet when the site was sold. Did Huffington sell Huffington Post to accumulate wealth? Or was it an attempt to increase economic funding for her outlet?
"After building a media empire based on unpaid writers and republishing the works of others... we are calling on Arianna Huffington to invest in quality journalism by sharing a portion of this fortune," said Bernie Lunzer, the president of the America's Newspaper Guild.
Huffington said that she would use the money generated from the content made by unpaid bloggers to hire young and fresh reporters to do hard-hitting investigations. Yet, Huffington's selling out betrayed the bloggers who dedicated unpaid labor to the site because she rejected the political, left-leaning image they had worked towards. After the sale, Huffington said that Huffington Post had no political ideology, and was more than a political website.
Furthermore, according to leaked documents, Huffington herself made $21 million off of the sale. The documents also state that Huffington Post had $5 million in cash on its balance sheet when the site was sold. Did Huffington sell Huffington Post to accumulate wealth? Or was it an attempt to increase economic funding for her outlet?
Another interesting tidbit is that after Verizon took over AOL in 2015, Huffington stepped down in 2016 to focus on a health-and-wellness startup, Thrive Global. I think that ultimately, she could handle the corporate influence of AOL, but Verizon (and its ties to net neutrality) crossed a line for her. However, even while Huffington was still the head of Huffington Post, she was named to the board of directors at Uber: a certain corporate and journalistic conflict of interest.
I'm not sure if Huffington thought she was "buying in" when she sold out to AOL, but one thing is for sure: she lost control of the liberal media-giant that once was Huffington Post.
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