• Internet webzine and "blog" featuring mostly left-liberal participants
• Founded by and named for eccentric "progressive" writer Arianna Huffington 

Huffington Post is an Internet webzine featuring mostly left-liberal participants. Though press releases use the word "blog" to describe it, Huffington Post is neither constantly updated nor interactive; nor is it an outlet for fresh voices not already heard in the liberal mainstream media. It was launched as a commercial venture on May 9, 2005. Huffington Post takes its name from its creator Arianna Huffington, a "progressive independent" syndicated columnist, author, media personality, and co-host of the nationally-distributed public radio program Left, Right & Center. 

In designing Huffington Post, Huffington openly intended to do for the left what Matt Drudge's DrudgeReport.com has done to coalesce the right. As the New York Times reported, Huffington hired Drudge's "right-hand web whiz, Andrew Breitbart" to help her prepare her website for launch. Little-known to the left-liberals who she attempted to recruit as investors and bloggers, Breitbart is co-author of the 2004 book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon -- The Case Against Celebrity. "People would have gone crazy here [in Hollywood]," one of Huffington's friends told the L.A. Weekly, had they known that the person running The Huffington Post website "was the guy who wrote that awful book."

Huffington initially "approached five major players" to invest in Huffington Post, wrote L.A. Weekly reporter Nikki Finke in May 2005. Among them were Pulp Fiction producer Lawrence Bender, and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's wife, Laurie [David]. "… Sources tell me that of the five, only Bender and David expressed real interest, and lo and behold, Laurie David shows up on the [Huffington Post] home page."

Among the "bloggers" who Huffington initially said had volunteered to write pieces were former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite; West Wing creator-writer-producer Aaron Sorkin; playwright David Mamet; writers Nora Ephron and Norman Mailer; actors Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Gwyneth Paltrow, John Cusack, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus; Playboy Magazine chief executive Christie Hefner; music mogul David Geffen; cable channel mogul Barry Diller; Clinton White House attorney Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.; former Colorado Senator Gary Hart; current New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine; and former Huffington beau Mort Zuckerman.

Ephron told the New York Times that she sees HuffingtonPost "as a chance for the left to balance out the right." Initially Huffington insisted that conservatives would be welcome.  A handful--Tony Blankley; former President George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum; film critic and radio talk host Michael Medved; and Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund—did contribute occasionally at the beginning. But within a few weeks after Huffington Post's launch, however, writings by these few conservative authors became scarce.

Among Huffington Post's notable repeat bylines are those of former Democratic Assemblyman and State Senator Tom Hayden; Marc Cooper of The Nation Institute; longtime Sierra Club President Carl Pope; slavery reparations advocate and TransAfrica leader Randall Robinson; Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern; Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter; The Nation media critic Eric Alterman; Institute for Public Accuracy founder Norman Solomon; LewRockwell.com founder Lew Rockwell; and environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Several members of Congress have written pieces for Huffington Post. These include Representatives George Miller of California, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, John Tierney of Massachusetts, Jim McDermott of Washington State, and as a repeat contributor John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan. All are Democrats and members of the socialist-oriented Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives.

Control of the day-to-day operation of Huffington Post is in the hands of seven paid staffers in New York City under the direction of Huffington's business partner in this venture, Ken Lerer, a former Executive Vice President with AOL Time Warner.

Huffington Post does not pay its writers. What they write, however, is sold for profit to newspapers by the Chicago Tribune's Tribune Media Services, which also syndicates Huffington's column.