Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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Sources 
Sources consulted for this case study: Sanoma annual reports, Sanoma’s website and industry 
publications. Concerning NU.nl Laurens Verhagen (former chief editor NU.nl) and the 
Business Consultancy department of Sanoma Media Netherlands were interviewed. See the 
bibliography in Appendix A for further references. 

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The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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C Company case study The Huffington Post 
Company history 
The Huffington Post was founded by Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti in 
May 2005, with $2 million of seed capital. 
The site started as a political forum and, after 
traffic grew during the 2008 election, expanded into other news domains. 
The Huffington 
Post is an American news website, content and blogs aggregator, featuring news from various 
news sources and offering space to blogs from volunteers, celebrities and liberal leaning 
columnists. The site offers coverage of politics, media, business, entertainment, living, style, 
the green movement, world news, and comedy and has (aggregated) news, blogs, and original 
content. (Wikipedia) 
Arianna Huffington raised $5 million in August 2006 from venture capital firms including 
SoftBank Capital and Greycroft Partners, as well as from individuals such as Bob Pittman, the 
former AOL executive. In a second round of fundraising, in September 2007, the Huffington 
Post raised a further $5 million for expansion in original journalism and local news reporting. 
Since 2008, the site launched several local versions like the HuffPost Chicago; New York, 
Denver and Los Angeles (Wikipedia). Compared to traditional newspapers this online news 
site is remarkable because it managed to build a readership comparable in size to the New 
York Times within six years after its launch in 2005 (Grueskin, Seave, & Graves, 2011). 
In February 2011 The Huffington Post was taken over by the internet company AOL for 
$ 
131 million and will become part of the The Huffigton Post Media Group, which will include 
The Huffington Post and existing AOL properties Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, 
MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, and 
StyleList. (Bloomberg). With the take-over AOL thus hugely expands its news and original 
content creation business. As part of the deal Arianna Huffington became president and 
editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. 
The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors per month in the 
United States and 270 million around the world. Following the close of this transaction, AOL 
will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, 
analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and 
videographers around the globe. 
After buying the Huffington Post website, AOL Inc is accelerating its expansion of local 
coverage and intends to attract readers interested in campaign news ahead of the 2012 
presidential election (Pulley, 2011)). 
In August 2011 the AOL Huffington Post Media Group announced the launch of HuffPost 
BlackVoices, a site that covers news and cultural trends from a black perspective with a fresh, 
fearless point-of-view and a spirited, real-time platform for a diversity of opinions 
(corp.aol.com).