Well, not exactly, but she certainly seemed keen on playing off that recent joke circulating the media today at the Business Insider’s StartUp 2012 event in New York City.
As the president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post (News - Alert) Media Group, Huffington discussed how she “built a blog into an empire” with the Business Insider’s Editor-in-Chief, Henry Blodget.
What does Huffington want to focus on? “Being more independent so we can accelerate all our growth.”
Sounds like a fair goal, but how do you do that when your company is owned by AOL (News - Alert)?
She told Blodget that her company relies on fulltime staff, not freelancers as most AOL-owned media groups have in the past. “We have real, measurable results for what has been achieved,” she said. As the HuffPo, as it’s fondly called, has been in the news for its seventh birthday occurring this coming Monday, May 7, and for its recent achievement winning a Pulitzer award, the media group also plans on expanding into multiple countries in multiple languages.
Huffington noted that a development in video streaming is coming to the HuffPo, and this was after a comment from Blodget that went something like “Everyone thought you were going to be destroyed and swallowed by AOL. Everyone left except you. How did you rebuild your management team?”
Simply put, Huffington said she had no intention of leaving. Even after AOL’s purchase of the business, the Huffington Post was and still is her baby. “I never wanted an exit,” she said. “We have maintained the start up spirit too. I’m a very frugal Greek peasant girl, for sure. I’ve been nursing this Starbucks since 7:30am,” she mused.
With page views topping 1.2 billion, Huffington seems to be doing something right and thoroughly invigorated the baby-faced startup hopefuls in the audience with her encouragement and downright protestation against the stress of our modern times. “I want us to be a pioneer in helping people reduce stress. Stress is out of control. Sleep deprivation is out of control.”
For a woman with four BlackBerrys, she’s a paradox, alright. But a damn successful one at that.