The Huffington Post has become the Strongly Establishedington Post:
A group led by venture capital firm Softbank is investing $5 million in the Huffington Post, an online news site and political blog owned by the pundit Arianna Huffington, The Post has learned.
The investment comes a little over a year after the launch of the Huffington Post – which then was billed as a celebrity-filled blog but has since evolved in to its own news brand.
An announcement of the investment could come as soon as today.
In addition to Softbank, venture capitalist Alan Patricof is also investing in the site, as well as some of the initial investors. Huffington and former Time Warner executive Ken Lerer founded the site.
The investment comes amid a surge in interest in content on the Internet among big media firms. Venture capital firms, meanwhile, have typically focused on technology companies but now are increasingly looking at investing in Internet content.
In short: the Internet is coming of age as an investment property. Expect more stories about this kind of move to help shore up — and share in — content-heavy Internet sites.
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.