Decision ‘08

My Cup (Of Joy) Runneth Over

The NY Times is reporting that the Huffington Post will soon have ‘original reporting’ on its blog:

The Huffington Post, which started about 18 months ago as a political Web site for celebrity bloggers, is preparing to venture into original reporting, with plans to cover Congress and, already, the 2008 presidential campaign.

Arianna Huffington, who started HuffingtonPost.com, said yesterday that the site had hired Melinda Henneberger, a print journalist most recently with Newsweek magazine, as its political editor. The site has about 2.3 million unique visitors a month, making it one of the more popular blog sites.

Ms. Huffington said Ms. Henneberger would hire a number of other journalists to begin producing original content, “with attitude.”

“Now is the time to generate our own original content,” Ms. Huffington said. “It was always our intention, once we had the money, to hire people to do reporting.”

Softbank Capital, a venture capital group, invested $5 million in the site earlier this year. Ms. Huffington said she planned to hire investigative reporters as well as a multimedia team to do video reports and wanted to make the site more interactive.

The site already offers a mix of opinion and breaking news from wire services and other sources, but Ms. Huffington said she wanted to produce reported pieces that were expressed with individual voices.

“That’s the combination you need online,” she said, adding that unlike bloggers, who generally file when they want to, her reporters will have deadlines and regular schedules and will travel for their articles. Also unlike bloggers, Ms. Huffington said, they will be paid.

Wow, that’s one more reason to visit Huff’n'Puff…wait, that’s only one reason…well, okay, it’s not really a reason at all…2.3 million visitors a month, eh? That’s one helluva large cocoon…