Poynter had a short interview with Arianna Huffington about The Huffington Post. The site had 4.7 million unique visitors in May, up 255% over a year earlier:
How does The Huffington Post cover the news differently from mainstream media organizations?
Huffington: A lot of the discontent with traditional journalism is because too many reporters have forgotten that the highest calling of journalists is to ferret out the truth, consequences be damned. Unfortunately, this is a concept that has fallen out of favor with too many journalists, who are obsessed with a false view of “balance” and “objectivity” and have become addicted not to the tireless pursuit of truth, but to the tireless promotion of the misguided notion that every story has two sides… HuffPost eschews the misleading “on the one hand, but on the other” approach to news because not every story has an “other hand.” Also, HuffPost doesn’t pretend not to have opinions, but it does make them transparent.
She says her biggest mistake was not instituting comment moderation on news stories right at launch.
Earlier in the week a Poytner reader wrote in:
The Huffington Post’s “News of the Week the Mainstream Media Forgot to Report” could be a great service if the column actually “unearthed” anything, says Dan Mitchell. “But, incredibly, nearly every single item they post is based on, and actually links to, a mainstream media story. They cite stories by The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, and many other mainstream media outlets as proof that the mainstream media isn’t covering those stories.” His comment pointing that out was rejected by HuffPost moderators.