Interesting. I wonder if there will be any real outreach to the already existing Chicago blogosphere? Sam Zell ought to pay attention, but sites like GapersBlock shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
The Huffington Post is planning to expand into local news across the US, founder Arianna Huffington said last night, beginning with a site edited for the community of Chicago.
Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in “dozens of US cities”. The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.
“We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began,” said Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media’s internal Future of Journalism conference.
“[Huffington Post political editor] Tom Edsell has been mentoring a small team of young reporters who have done a great job breaking news through the election cycle. We are working on our third round of financing and a lot of money raised will go to expanding that reporting team,” she added.
[From Huffington Post to expand into local news across the US | Media | guardian.co.uk]
Huffington’s model doesn’t include paying for content, will that continue?