Huffington Post replaces its CEO
Huffington Post CEO Betsy Morgan is leaving the company, slated to be replaced later this week by Softbank Capital's Eric Hippeau. Morgan was first hired in 2007.
The news was first reported on Monday by PaidContent.
Hippeau has been serving on the board of the left-leaning news outlet, which was co-founded by pundit Arianna Huffington in 2005, since its first round of venture funding in 2006. The former chairman and CEO of Ziff Davis Media, he's on the board of a number of different companies including Yahoo. His new role at Softbank will be "special partner and adviser."
In December, the Huffington Post raised another $25 million in funding. It was riding a wave of popularity--and scrutiny, considering its controversial views on paying for content and labor--in the wake of the 2008 presidential election, and was starting to aggressively expand coverage beyond politics. Long-term profitability, however, was still a question mark.
"We've had a really good year, ad-wise," Morgan said to CNET News in an interview shortly before the presidential election. "We're in the game at a different point in our life cycle than the other mainstream players. We've seen the brand really grow to top of mind with both agencies and clients and the response has been really positive."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
- by mbenedict June 15, 2009 10:42 PM PDT
- Huffington Post's business model is all wrong. Didn't anyone learn anything from the dot-com bubble burst?
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(6 Comments)Huffington Post has the typical "profits don't matter" so "lets raise a ton of money from VC to grow" model. As a result they have to over-engineer everything, hiring a ton of people and building a massive, expensive technical infrastructure (to support thousands of bloggers, etc.)
They generate maybe $8 million in yearly revenue but need a 40 to 50 employees to do so!!
As a comparison (both politically and economically) look at Matt Drudge. His Drudge Report is a much leaner, simpler model. He has one static HTML page vs. Huffington Post's thousands of bloggers.
Yet with one cached HTML page, the Drudge Report manages to generate about 50% of Huffington Post's traffic and revenue (about $4 million a year) with just TWO employees (counting Matt Drudge himself plus his colleague Andrew Brietbart) and very little infrastructure cost.
Needless to say the Drudge Report is highly profitable, while the Huffington Post likely operates at a net loss. The Huffington Post needs to do much more than replacing the CEO; they need to jettison their entire business model.