French version of Huffington Post goes online

30 Jan 2012

PARIS, FRANCE: The French version of US millionaire Arianna Huffington's news website, the Huffington Post, has gone online and is edited by the journalist wife of shamed former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Anne Sinclair will edit Le HuffPo.

Anne Sinclair was already a leading French journalist even before International Monetary Fund director Strauss-Kahn resigned last year, and speculation over her relationship has added to the buzz surrounding the new project.

Sinclair, a multimillionaire heiress and former television anchor, stood by her husband. Charges that he attacked a New York hotel maid have been dropped, but he has been dogged by a string of further allegations.

The site is closely modelled on its US parent, with the same design and logo but with a distinctly French mix of opinion columns, aggregated news content and interactive news features.

"Le HuffPo" is a partnership between the leading French daily Le Monde, the US parent firm and banker Matthieu Pigasse. It incorporates a former French interactive news website, Le Post, owned by Le Monde.

Huffington launched her original American website in 2005 and sold it to Internet giant AOL in 2011 for US$315 million (about R2.46bn at today's rate).

It boasts 37 million readers per month in the United States.

The size of the buyout surprised many observers, as the HuffPo's gossipy mix of celebrity, political and lifestyle stories was at first largely culled from other outlets and fleshed out with unpaid columnists.

It has become a major advertising platform, however, and now has British and Canadian editions. The British version has not been a hit, however, and it remains to be seen whether the formula will catch on in France.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge

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