The St. Petersburg Times notes that love her or hate her Arianna Huffington has beat the odds:
In a medium started by guys typing at computers in their bedrooms, she was a glamorous socialite with an A-list address book of investors and endless media coverage.
Critics swore Arianna Huffington’s dream – a collection of blogs from the likes of Warren Beatty and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. – would die a quick death in a space where grass roots support and hipster cachet was everything.
But exactly one year after establishing her Huffington Post Web site, the 55-year-old author and pundit has become a major voice in the blogosphere, defying critics while building a destination in cyberspace whose growth mirrors the maturation of blogging itself.
“The people I admire have always been willing to pursue their vision, even if others ridicule them,” said Huffington, who recently joined Matt Drudge as the two bloggers included on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. “The most important conversation going on right now has been online, and it’s only going to get more and more important.”
While most of the millions of blogs in cyberspace are simply online diaries, some have emerged as profitable businesses, attracting thousands of viewers each day and thousands of dollars in ad revenue. Henry Copeland, founder of the online advertising broker Blogads, estimated so-called “A-list” blogs – he mentioned political sites such as the Daily Kos and TalkingPointsMemo – can earn up to $50,000 in revenue a month, with elite bloggers “making more than … I earn” in profit.
Huffington’s megablog is clearly one of them (TMV isn’t in that category yet..). It just goes back to a solid piece of advice for young people or anyone who wants to start a new venture (regardless of ideology): don’t listen to the naysayers because for every person who predicts you’ll succeed there are 10 who’ll discourage you. Follow your dream for a while first and see what happens for yourself — and to yourself.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.