The Huffington Post was launched on May 9, 2005, as a commentary outlet, blog, and an alternative to news aggregators such as the
Drudge Report. Her first foray into the Internet was the website Resignation.com, which called for the resignation of President
Bill Clinton and was a rallying place for
conservatives opposing Clinton. An early strategy was crafting
search-engine optimized (SEO) stories and headlines based around
trending keywords, such as "What Time Is the Super Bowl?" In August 2006, the website raised a $5 million
Series A round from
SoftBank Capital and
Greycroft. In December 2008, the website raised $25 million, to be used for technology, infrastructure,
investigative journalism, and development of local versions, from
Oak Investment Partners at a $100 million valuation and
Fred Harman of Oak Investment Partners joined its board of directors. In June 2009,
Eric Hippeau, co-managing partner of
Softbank Capital, became CEO. In January 2011, the website received 35% of its traffic from
web search engines (SEOs), compared to 20% at
CNN. This strategy appealed to AOL CEO
Tim Armstrong, who tried to implement similar SEO-driven journalism practices at AOL at the time of its acquisition of
The Huffington Post. As part of the deal, Huffington became president and editor-in-chief of
The Huffington Post and existing AOL properties
Engadget,
TechCrunch,
Moviefone,
MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater (now
subpage on the HuffPost Entertainment subpage),
AOL Music, AOL Latino (now
HuffPost Voices), AutoBlog, Patch, and StyleList. In December 2011, the website had 36.2 million unique visitors. By late 2013, the website operated as a "stand-alone business" within AOL, taking control of more of its own business and advertising operations, and directing more effort towards securing "premium advertising". In June 2015,
Verizon Communications acquired AOL for US$4.4 billion and the site became a part of Verizon Media. with changes to the design of its website and logo, and content and reporting. In January 2019, 20 employees were laid off as a part of Verizon Media laying off 7% of its staff. The opinion and health sections were eliminated.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Jason Cherkis lost his job. In July 2019, the website published a story written by Rachel Wolfson, a publicist, that praised financier
Jeffrey Epstein, a sex offender. Editors later removed the article at the author's request. In March 2020, Polgreen announced that she would step down as editor-in-chief to become the head of content at
Gimlet Media. In February 2021,
BuzzFeed acquired
HuffPost from Verizon Media for stock. In March 2021, BuzzFeed CEO
Jonah Peretti said that the company had lost "around $20 million" during the previous year, and
HuffPost Canada was shut down and ceased publishing. BuzzFeed
laid off 47
HuffPost staff, mostly journalists, in the U.S. and closed down
HuffPost Canada, laying off 23 staff working for the Canadian and Quebec divisions of the company. In April 2021,
Danielle Belton became editor-in-chief. Following the shut-down of
BuzzFeed News in 2023, BuzzFeed, Inc. refocused its news efforts into
HuffPost, with plans to rehire past
BuzzFeed News employees at
HuffPost or at BuzzFeed. The move also stemmed from lower advertiser interest in traditional news platforms. By July 2025, traffic dropped 40% due to
Google's "AI Overviews" feature, with AI-generated blurbs diverting traffic from publisher content.
Local editions • In spring 2007, the first local version,
HuffPost Chicago, was launched. • In June 2009,
HuffPost New York was launched. •
HuffPost Denver launched in September 2009. •
HuffPost Los Angeles launched in December 2009. •
HuffPost San Francisco launched in July 2011. •
HuffPost Detroit launched in November 2011. •
HuffPost Miami launched in November 2011. •
HuffPost Hawaii was launched in collaboration with the online investigative reporting and public affairs news service Honolulu Civil Beat in September 2013.
International editions • In May 2011,
HuffPost Canada, the first international edition, was launched. Following
BuzzFeed's acquisition of HuffPost, it was announced in March 2021 that
HuffPost Canada would stop publishing content and cease operations the following week as part of a broader restructuring plan for the company. • In July 2011,
Huffington Post UK was launched. In April 2026, it added
generative AI capabilities from
Taboola. • In January 2012, in partnership with and Les Nouvelles Editions Indépendantes, the website launched
Le Huffington Post, a French-language edition and the first in a non-English speaking country. In January 2012, it appointed as editorial director
Anne Sinclair; she stood by her husband
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former
IMF head, when several women accused him of sexual assault. Commentators at ,
Rue89, and warned against potential conflict of interest in the French edition's news coverage. • In February 2012,
Le Huffington Post Québec (
HuffPost Québec), a French language edition, was launched in Canada's primarily French-speaking province,
Quebec. • In May 2012, a U.S.-based Spanish-language edition was launched under the name
HuffPost Voces, replacing AOL Latino. • In June 2012, the edition in Spain,
El Huffington Post (later
ElHuffPost), was launched. • In May 2013, an edition for Japan, ''
(HuffPost Japan
), was launched with the collaboration of Asahi Shimbun'', the first edition in an Asian country. • In September 2013, an Italian edition, ''L'Huffington Post'', was launched, directed by journalist
Lucia Annunziata in collaboration with the media company
Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso. • In June 2013,
Al Huffington Post, the third
francophone edition, launched for the
Maghreb French area. In December 2019, the
Maghreb edition was closed. • In October 2013,
Munich-based
Huffington Post Deutschland was launched in co-operation with the
liberal-conservative magazine
Focus, covering
German-speaking Europe. In January 2018, it was announced that the German language edition would shut down in March 2018. • In January 2014, Arianna Huffington and
Nicolas Berggruen announced the launch of the
WorldPost, created in partnership with the
Berggruen Institute. Its contributors have included former British prime minister
Tony Blair, Google CEO
Eric Schmidt, novelist
Jonathan Franzen, and musician
Yo-Yo Ma. • In January 2014, the Brazilian version was launched as
Brasil Post, in partnership with
Grupo Abril, the first in Latin America. Brasil Post was later renamed
Huffington Post Brasil in 2015, then
HuffPost Brasil. In November 2020, the edition was closed down following BuzzFeed's acquisition. • In February 2014, a Korean language edition was launched in
South Korea in partnership with the local center-left newspaper
The Hankyoreh. • In September 2014, planned launches were announced for sites for Greece, India, as well
HuffPost Arabi, an Arabic version of the website. In November 2020, HuffPost shut down its India operation after six years. According to some media reports, the acquisition did not include the India site due to regulations barring foreign ownership of Indian Digital Media. • In August 2015,
HuffPost Australia was launched. • In November 2016,
HuffPost South Africa, the brand's first sub-Saharan edition, was launched in partnership with
Media24. The South African edition ceased publication when the partnership with Media24 ended in 2018.
Contributor network From its launch in 2005 until 2018, HuffPost featured articles from as many as 100,000 unpaid bloggers through its
contributor network.
Unpaid status of bloggers In February 2011, Visual Art Source stopped publishing content on HuffPost, in protest of its writers not being paid per the terms of the HuffPost contributors network. In March 2011, the action was endorsed by the
National Writers Union and
NewsGuild-CWA; however, the boycott was dropped in October 2011. In April 2011, the website was targeted with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by
Jonathan Tasini on behalf of thousands of bloggers who had submitted material to the website without being paid. On March 30, 2012, the suit was dismissed with
prejudice by the court, holding that the bloggers had volunteered their services, their compensation being publication. The practice of publishing blog posts from unpaid contributors ended in January 2018.
Anti-vax articles by bloggers When
HuffPost operated its contributor network, it was noted to have provided a platform for
alternative medicine and supporters of
vaccine hesitancy. Rahul Parikh wrote in 2009 that the website's coverage of health and wellness issues "seems defined mostly by bloggers who are friends of [Arianna] Huffington or those who mirror her own advocacy of alternative medicine". It was referred to as "an outpost for quackery" in an article published in
The Atlantic in January 2012. In January 2011,
Steven Novella, president of the
New England Skeptical Society, criticized HuffPost for allowing
homeopathy proponent Dana Ullman to have a blog on the site. In November 2011, skeptic
Brian Dunning listed HuffPost at No. 10 on his "Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" list.
Notable bloggers Notable contributors have included: •
Adrienne Wu on gender, and species, identity • Arianna Huffington •
Barack Obama on politics •
Robert Reich on politics •
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge on mental health issues. •
Harry Shearer on life issues •
Jeff Pollack on music •
Kurtis Chadwick on international culture •
Roy Sekoff on politics •
Jeff Halevy on health •
Cenk Uygur •
Diane Ravitch on education •
Jacob M. Appel on ethics •
Howard Friedman on statistics and politics •
Auren Hoffman on business and politics •
Cara Santa Maria on science •
Nancy Rappaport on child psychiatry •
Iris Krasnow on marriage •
Anand Reddi publishes on
global health •
Radley Balko on civil liberties and the criminal justice system •
Frances Beinecke on climate change and the environment •
Jenna Busch on the entertainment industry •
Jerry Capeci on the mafia •
Margaret Carlson on politics •
Dominic Carter on politics •
Deepak Chopra on integrative medicine and personal transformation •
John Conyers (deceased) on politics •
Danielle Crittenden on Jewish lifestyle •
Laurie David on environmental and food issues •
Andrea Doucet on gender relations •
Ryan Duffy on demographic trends •
Maddy Dychtwald on gender relations •
Ivan Eland on defense •
Mitch Feierstein on the Federal Reserve •
Bruce Fein on law •
Ashley Feinberg on politics, media, and technology •
Michelle Fields on politics •
Rob Fishman on social media •
Myriam François-Cerrah on France and the Middle East •
Dan Froomkin on politics •
Yvonne K. Fulbright on sexuality •
Phil Radford on climate change and the environment •
Lauren Galley on issues important to teen girls •
Mort Gerberg publishes cartoons •
Tim Giago on Native Americans •
Steve Gilliard on politics •
Philip Giraldi on counterterrorism issues •
David Goldstein on politics •
Nathan Gonzalez on foreign policy •
Kent Greenfield on constitutional law, business law, and legal theory •
Anthony Gregory on habeas corpus •
Greg Gutfeld on politics in a comedic taste •
David Hackel on politics •
Leon Hadar on foreign policy •
Katie Halper on politics •
Thor Halvorssen on human rights •
Jane Hamsher on politics •
Aaron Harber on politics •
Johann Hari on drugs and addiction •
David Harsanyi on politics and culture •
Gary Hart on international law •
Mehdi Hasan on the Middle East •
Auren Hoffman on entrepreneurship •
Paul Holdengräber on the arts •
Hamid Naderi Yeganeh on math art ==Political stance==