Interviewee: Arianna Huffington
Interviewer: Charlie Rose
Date: May 01, 2008

Arianna Huffington has established herself as the Greek goddess of new media. She is the creator and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, now one of the world’s most popular news and collective blogging sites.

Born in Greece and raised in England, Arianne Huffington launched The Huffington Post on May 9, 2005 with Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti. Her site is a media pioneer, one of the first to jointly serve as a 24/7 news platform and a group blog.

In its first week alone, The Huffington Post attracted such guest bloggers as Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Larry David, Norman Mailer, Walter Cronkite, Gary Hart, and John Cusack. Today, it boasts of more than 4,000 contributors, covering anyone from politics, entertainment, education, and philanthropy.

According to Nielsen, The Huffington Post has 8 million unique visitors monthly, at par with such sites as The Washington Post and BBC. HuffPo, as it is fondly called, won the 2008 Webby Award for Best Political Website. It also made Arianna Huffington part of the Time 100 Most Influential People in 2006.

Arianna Huffington finished her undergraduate studies and secured her MA from Cambridge University. Just 21, she presided over the Cambridge Union, one of Britain’s renowned debating societies.

In 1980, she moved to the US. More than a decade later, she became co-host of the public radio program, Left, Right & Center, and writer of a nationally syndicated column.

An advocate for activist governance in America, she ran — in vain — for California governor in 2003. Nowadays, she can be found serving on the boards of A Place Called Home, Archer School for Girls, and the Reform Institute, among other nonprofit entities.

More than anything, Arianna Huffington is a prolific author. She penned a dozen books, starting with The Female Woman in 1974. More recently, she wrote Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe. Other Huffington books include On Becoming Fearless…., Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America, Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America, How to Overthrow the Government, The Gods of Greece, The Woman Behind the Legend, and After Reason. Arianna Huffington also wrote Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, which was translated into 16 languages and made into a Warner Bros movie starring Anthony Hopkins.