The 1% are about to get their own publication. The digital media titan Arianna Huffington and the billionaire investor Nicolas Berggruen on Wednesday announced the launch of World Post, a comment and news website that looks set to become a platform for some of the most powerful people on the planet.
Inevitably, the World Post will be launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this month. Many of its contributors including former British prime minister Tony Blair, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s Eric Schmidt are regulars at the annual jamboree for the world’s most connected people. Many are also advisers to the Berggruen Institute, the billionaire investor’s nonpartisan policy think tank.
Berggruen, known as the “homeless billionaire” because he prefers living in hotels to owning houses, said the 50/50 venture with Huffington Post owner AOL would not just be a platform for the world’s elite. “You have to start somewhere,” he said. “A lot of these people are knowledgable. On the other hand you will see a lot of unknown voices, young voices and from places that are not that obvious.”
Huffington said: “You can have all those heads of state and major business people, etcetera etcetera, writing right next to an unemployed man from Spain, a student from Brazil. The great heart of HuffPo is no hierarchy.”
The site will have its own stand-alone presence but will also replace the Huffington Post’s current world section. The Huffington Post will run the advertising side of the business and will also organise conferences and sponsored sections. Neither side will comment on how much funding has been put into the business.
Berggruen said World Post would be run for profit. “I think that’s healthy,” he said. “But if we were going to make an investment in the most exciting areas to make an investment, it probably wouldn’t be this. If it doesn’t make money, we will still support it,” he said. “We’re not in it just to make money.
"It has to be profitable to be sustainable,” Huffington said.
The Huffington Post is now in 10 countries and will use its locally based journalists as well as three new dedicated foreign correspondents in Beijing, Beirut and Cairo to supply content for World Post alongside its other contributors. More hires are expected. But Huffington said its main strength would be in its ability to collaborate with local new organisations as well as its top level contributors.
“Collaboration is the key, especially in the linked economy,” said Huffington. “Recognising that you are not going to do the only good coverage. If you can bring your reader what other good work is being done, you improve their experience. That’s really what the heart of World Post is about.”
The publication's initial editorial board has deep ties to media companies around the world. Alongside Huffington and Berggruen it includes Juan Luis Cebrian, founding editor of El Pais, Dileep Padgaonkar, consulting editor of the Times of India, Yoichi Funabashi, former editor-in-chief of Asahi Shimbun, and Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay and backer of a new investigative reporting organisation, First Look Media, set up with former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Huffington said 42% of the Huffington Post’s 94m unique visitors each month come from outside the US. “Just over two years ago we didn’t have an international edition anywhere,” she said.
“We have an incredible opportunity to use the pieces we already have on the board to speak to our existing audience and grow that audience simply by embracing the fact that we are an international entity,” said Peter Goodman, executive business and global news editor for the Huffington Post.
The launch comes amid a wave of new money going into media ventures. Berggruen said it was clear that traditional news organisations were still struggling and that many more would fail. “I think there will be a few media voices that really have weight and will survive but fewer and fewer,” he said.
Berggruen, an avid art collector, said World Post would also move beyond public policy and would address issues that interest people around the world including the environment, health and the arts. “Culture is much bigger than politics. It will be about science, art. Anything that captures our imagination and our lives,” he said.
Another board member Nathan Gardels, a syndication expert, media fellow at the World Economic Forum and editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, said the news industry was regaining an international perspective unseen since the end of the cold war.
“Most of the world’s media has fragmented then rationalized and then re-localized,” he said. Thirty years ago the news was much more international, he said, “despite the fact that we are more interdependent than ever.”
“There is definitely an audience now for an international perspective. There may not be enough people in Los Angeles who want that but globally I think there is.”
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