Business & Tech

Patch's Parent Company Buys The Huffington Post for $315 Million

Arianna Huffington's online media powerhouse will partner with Patch. She will be president and editor in chief of The Huffington Post Media Group under AOL.

AOL, which owns Patch, has announced an agreement to buy online media site The Huffington Post for $315 million.

Patch has nearly 800 community news websites across the country, including La Mesa Patch and 11 others in San Diego County—covering Santee, Lemon Grove, Mount Helix (plus Casa de Oro and Spring Valley), Rancho Bernardo, La Jolla, Coronado, Imperial Beach, Poway, Carlsbad, Encinitas and Ramona.

The deal will bring Patch—along with other AOL properties such as TechCrunch, MapQuest, Engadget and Moviefone—under Arianna Huffington as  president and editor in chief of The Huffington Post Media Group.

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The acquisition will give the combined group a base of 117 million unique visitors each month in the United States, according to comScore data cited by AOL in a press release.

The Huffington Post, which has 25 million unique visitors a month according to the release, has become known for group blog posts from high-profile people such as President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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"The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers, " AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong said in a statement. "Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers."

The Huffington Post was founded in 2005.

Armstrong continued, "Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company."

For her part, Huffington said: "This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us. The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years—though now at light speed—by combining with AOL.

"Our readers will still be able to come to the Huffington Post at the same URL, and find all the same content they've grown to love, plus a lot more—more local, more tech, more entertainment, more finance, and lots more video.

"We are fusing a legendary and powerful new media brand with a vibrant, innovative news organization, known for its distinctive voice, a highly engaged audience, an expertise in community-building, and a track record for demystifying the news and putting flesh and blood on the data while drawing our audience into the conversation."

For more on the move, see the press release from AOL.

Highlights:

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader—one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary and information. Huffington and her team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience.  

By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable—social, local, video, mobile and tablet. 

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influential audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, Moviefone and, of course, Patch.

To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group, with Huffington as president and editor-in-chief.

AOL is playing to win—and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet.

The official release on the acquisition is here.

The New York Times described the move as an "unlikely pairing" and noted that both Patch and The Huffington Post have been criticized for the quality or sources of their content.

The Times story noted: "By handing so much control over to Ms. Huffington and making her a public face of the company, AOL, which has been seen as apolitical, risks losing its nonpartisan image. Ms. Huffington said her politics would have no bearing on how she ran the new business."


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