$315 million deal puts Arianna Huffington in charge of AOL’s news operations
AOL announced on Monday it will acquire The Huffington Post, the popular progressive online news aggregator, for $315 million. The immediate benefit for AOL, whose market share has declined since separating from Time Warner in 2009, is that it will be able to expand its newsgathering service and original content creation. Meanwhile, Arianna Huffington will essentially become the public face of AOL, as she now will oversee the company’s national, local and financial news operations, as well as the company’s other media acquisitions such as MapQuest and Moviefone. She will also become the editor-in-chief of the new Huffington Post Media Group, which controls AOL’s editorial content. The Huffington Post, with was founded in 2005 by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer in 2005 with a meager $1-million dollar investment, is expected to generate $60-million in revenue this year.