Audio By Carbonatix
As reported in this space on Monday, the Huffington Post is planning to open a series of local branches — and in a recent interview, Arianna Huffington, the site’s namesake, revealed that an outpost in Denver would follow the launch of ones in Chicago and New York. Yesterday, I followed up via e-mail with HP spokesman Mario Ruiz, who invited questions — but when I sent him around a dozen, many of them quite detailed, he replied with a request for fewer inquiries. So I whittled the original batch down to four, and they netted this response from Ruiz: “Hi Michael, here’s what I can tell you at this point. We’re bringing on an editor for HuffPost Denver, opening an office and launch is late summer/early fall.”
Just two sentences, but some key info. Although HP doesn’t seem interested in building a large staff, the organization is setting up a Denver beachhead despite the recent closure of the Colorado Media Matters branch and significant layoffs at the Colorado Independent — two other left-leaning outfits funded by East Coast money. Moreover, the current plan calls for the project to be up and running in mere months. Expect the local online-news scene to receive a jolt of energy once it is.
