“The 1% are about to get their own publication.”
In its coverage of Arianna Huffington’s announcement of a new for-profit world news website, The Guardian cast the site as an elitist publication, custom-made for the one-percenters, a characterization the website’s founders reject.
Wednesday, Huffington announced a new for-profit, stand-alone website that will replace the Huffington Post’s current world news section. The site will be launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this month, and many of its contributors are major players on the world stage, including Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Google’s Eric Schmidt, and advisers to the billionaire investor’s think tank, Berggruen Institute—a list that inspired the Guardian to lead their coverage of the launch by declaring, “The 1% are about to get their own publication.”
However, as the Guardian reports, those involved in the site reject the notion that it will only cater to billionaires:
Berggruen, known as the “homeless billionaire” because he prefers living in hotels to owning houses, said the 50/50 venture with Huffington Post owner AOL would not just be a platform for the world’s elite. “You have to start somewhere,” he said. “A lot of these people are knowledgable. On the other hand you will see a lot of unknown voices, young voices and from places that are not that obvious.”
Huffington said: “You can have all those heads of state and major business people, etcetera etcetera, writing right next to an unemployed man from Spain, a student from Brazil. The great heart of HuffPo is no hierarchy.”
Berggruen and Huffington also defended the site’s for-profit status as a “healthy” business decision, insisting though that they are “not in it just to make money.”
Berggruen said World Post would be run for profit. “I think that’s healthy,” he said. “But if we were going to make an investment in the most exciting areas to make an investment, it probably wouldn’t be this. If it doesn’t make money, we will still support it,” he said. “We’re not in it just to make money. It has to be profitable to be sustainable,” Huffington said.
