 "<b>Tea with BS:</b> Arianna Huffington")
The designer-clad Arianna Huffington, president & editor-in-chief, Huffington Post Media Group, offers Vanita Kohli-Khandekar some simplistic but sage advice on what works in media
Arianna Huffington's Greek accent is unmistakable. She requests me to wait as she finishes a conference call. We are at the Taj Palace, New Delhi. And the 64-year-old has just taken the who's who of Indian digital media through the launch of AOL's Huffington Post India. Since I am keen on talking to Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet Ltd, and The Huffington Post's Indian partner, the delay suits me. Arianna walks back just as Gajwani and I are finishing, looks interestedly at the Darjeeling tea in the cup I am holding and asks for an empty cup. She pours herself some tea from the pot.
This is cosy, I think. Somehow, you expect a woman who stormed the online media world a decade ago to be like those powerful, hard-as-nails women in shows such as House of Cards. The designer-clad Arianna (I spot Prada on the shoes), however, has no hard edges. She speaks slowly and at length about how she views the tectonic shifts in media, technology and journalism. "That never-very-useful division between 'old media' and 'new media' has become increasingly blurred. And there is no one path to building a successful media company. We are in something of a golden age of journalism for news consumers. There's no shortage of great journalism and there's no shortage of people hungering for it. And there are many different business models being tried to connect the former with the latter," she says.
The irony is unmistakable. The Huffington Post's entire journey to the global stage thus far has been about connecting the dots in journalism, media and technology, profitably, much to the irritation of the rest of the media industry. It started in 2005, largely, as a blogger content website with strong left-liberal leanings. (Arianna was married to Republican Congressman Michael Huffington for 11 years before their divorce in 1997. She shifted loyalties to the Democrats in the mid-nineties.) The site, with its army of unpaid bloggers, many of them celebrities (actor Alec Baldwin, comedian Bill Maher), was dismissed as fluff by most major media brands. James Taranto, a Wall Street Journal columnist, once called it The Puffington Host. The Republicans are always cribbing that it gives a negative spin to Republican candidates and issues.
In 2011, the $2.3-billion AOL acquired The Huffington Post for $315 million. And it has been expanding ever since. The India edition is the thirteenth one. "The (AOL) acquisition was like stepping off a fast-moving train and on to a supersonic jet. We're still travelling toward the same destination but we have been able to get there much, much faster," she says.
Over the years, The Huffington Post has arrived at some balance among blogger, aggregated and original content. "Our biggest cost is journalists and engineers. We use original content, bloggers and aggregation. That is why we won a Pulitzer (in 2012 for military correspondent David Wood's 10-part series on wounded war veterans and their families). The vast majority of our traffic comes from the content we create ourselves," says Arianna.
This is clearly a touchy subject. The Huffington Post has always been considered somewhat 'low-brow,' because of its reliance on free content. Its key competitors are the high-quality, content-driven Slate, Daily Beast and Salon. In 2011, it faced a multi-million dollar lawsuit from one Jonathan Tasini on behalf of 'thousands of uncompensated bloggers.' (The suit was dismissed by a court in New York, which held that the bloggers had volunteered their work and were compensated by its publication.)
We are almost done with tea now and on to what social media and its ilk mean for journalism. And whether it is technology that will drive media in the future or vice versa. "We're adamant about never letting technology drive our content. Our job in the media is to use all the social and technological tools at our disposal to tell the stories that matter, as well as the ones that entertain, and to keep reminding ourselves that the tools are not the story," says Arianna. "(The) Huffington Post is both a media and a tech company, and media leaders of the future will have to deal with both media and technology," she says. The debate on what will be the face of the media company of the future - technology or content - has been raging for some time now.
Just then, Shekhar Gupta, the former head of The Indian Express, walks in. Arianna is due to shoot for his show, Walk the Talk (NDTV), after our chat. Gupta and I are meeting after a long time and talk shop for a couple of minutes before I request him (in Hindi) to hold on for a few more minutes, while I ask a few of my favourite questions on digital.
For all its benefits, the net remains beholden to four large American corporations - Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. How does this sit with the idea of the internet being a hub for free speech? "There's never been as much engagement and opportunity for people to have a voice in the global conversation. None of this is to say the internet is a perfect place but it is a tremendous boon to free speech. Worldwide distribution is now available to anyone with a laptop or a smartphone. Whether they have influence depends on whether they have anything to say and how much they're trusted. And just as in our offline relationships, trust is something that has to be constantly earned and continually maintained," she says.
That sounds simplistic. Is there a business model one can build by investing in great content and building trust and credibility? That is the thing that has foxed almost every major media brand online. Where is the money? "Advertising is the key revenue source. But there are several new forms of advertising - native, sponsored and so on. For example, Johnson & Johnson is interested in global maternal help, so they would buy (ad inventory) on a whole section on maternal health. Native advertising now forms one-third of our revenues," says Arianna. Native advertising means paid content or sections created for a sponsor and is the equivalent of advertorials in print. It is, at best, an encroachment into editorial space that readers/viewers understand. But it still doesn't mean that original content is pulling audiences and, therefore, revenues - either pay or advertising.
That, however, is a debate for another time.
Arianna Huffington's Greek accent is unmistakable. She requests me to wait as she finishes a conference call. We are at the Taj Palace, New Delhi. And the 64-year-old has just taken the who's who of Indian digital media through the launch of AOL's Huffington Post India. Since I am keen on talking to Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet Ltd, and The Huffington Post's Indian partner, the delay suits me. Arianna walks back just as Gajwani and I are finishing, looks interestedly at the Darjeeling tea in the cup I am holding and asks for an empty cup. She pours herself some tea from the pot.
This is cosy, I think. Somehow, you expect a woman who stormed the online media world a decade ago to be like those powerful, hard-as-nails women in shows such as House of Cards. The designer-clad Arianna (I spot Prada on the shoes), however, has no hard edges. She speaks slowly and at length about how she views the tectonic shifts in media, technology and journalism. "That never-very-useful division between 'old media' and 'new media' has become increasingly blurred. And there is no one path to building a successful media company. We are in something of a golden age of journalism for news consumers. There's no shortage of great journalism and there's no shortage of people hungering for it. And there are many different business models being tried to connect the former with the latter," she says.
The irony is unmistakable. The Huffington Post's entire journey to the global stage thus far has been about connecting the dots in journalism, media and technology, profitably, much to the irritation of the rest of the media industry. It started in 2005, largely, as a blogger content website with strong left-liberal leanings. (Arianna was married to Republican Congressman Michael Huffington for 11 years before their divorce in 1997. She shifted loyalties to the Democrats in the mid-nineties.) The site, with its army of unpaid bloggers, many of them celebrities (actor Alec Baldwin, comedian Bill Maher), was dismissed as fluff by most major media brands. James Taranto, a Wall Street Journal columnist, once called it The Puffington Host. The Republicans are always cribbing that it gives a negative spin to Republican candidates and issues.
In 2011, the $2.3-billion AOL acquired The Huffington Post for $315 million. And it has been expanding ever since. The India edition is the thirteenth one. "The (AOL) acquisition was like stepping off a fast-moving train and on to a supersonic jet. We're still travelling toward the same destination but we have been able to get there much, much faster," she says.
Over the years, The Huffington Post has arrived at some balance among blogger, aggregated and original content. "Our biggest cost is journalists and engineers. We use original content, bloggers and aggregation. That is why we won a Pulitzer (in 2012 for military correspondent David Wood's 10-part series on wounded war veterans and their families). The vast majority of our traffic comes from the content we create ourselves," says Arianna.
This is clearly a touchy subject. The Huffington Post has always been considered somewhat 'low-brow,' because of its reliance on free content. Its key competitors are the high-quality, content-driven Slate, Daily Beast and Salon. In 2011, it faced a multi-million dollar lawsuit from one Jonathan Tasini on behalf of 'thousands of uncompensated bloggers.' (The suit was dismissed by a court in New York, which held that the bloggers had volunteered their work and were compensated by its publication.)
We are almost done with tea now and on to what social media and its ilk mean for journalism. And whether it is technology that will drive media in the future or vice versa. "We're adamant about never letting technology drive our content. Our job in the media is to use all the social and technological tools at our disposal to tell the stories that matter, as well as the ones that entertain, and to keep reminding ourselves that the tools are not the story," says Arianna. "(The) Huffington Post is both a media and a tech company, and media leaders of the future will have to deal with both media and technology," she says. The debate on what will be the face of the media company of the future - technology or content - has been raging for some time now.
Just then, Shekhar Gupta, the former head of The Indian Express, walks in. Arianna is due to shoot for his show, Walk the Talk (NDTV), after our chat. Gupta and I are meeting after a long time and talk shop for a couple of minutes before I request him (in Hindi) to hold on for a few more minutes, while I ask a few of my favourite questions on digital.
For all its benefits, the net remains beholden to four large American corporations - Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. How does this sit with the idea of the internet being a hub for free speech? "There's never been as much engagement and opportunity for people to have a voice in the global conversation. None of this is to say the internet is a perfect place but it is a tremendous boon to free speech. Worldwide distribution is now available to anyone with a laptop or a smartphone. Whether they have influence depends on whether they have anything to say and how much they're trusted. And just as in our offline relationships, trust is something that has to be constantly earned and continually maintained," she says.
That sounds simplistic. Is there a business model one can build by investing in great content and building trust and credibility? That is the thing that has foxed almost every major media brand online. Where is the money? "Advertising is the key revenue source. But there are several new forms of advertising - native, sponsored and so on. For example, Johnson & Johnson is interested in global maternal help, so they would buy (ad inventory) on a whole section on maternal health. Native advertising now forms one-third of our revenues," says Arianna. Native advertising means paid content or sections created for a sponsor and is the equivalent of advertorials in print. It is, at best, an encroachment into editorial space that readers/viewers understand. But it still doesn't mean that original content is pulling audiences and, therefore, revenues - either pay or advertising.
That, however, is a debate for another time.