The head of news website Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, has announced some big changes for the site coming in 2015.
For one, the website will not renew its contract with the Associated Press and will instead develop its own in-house news service. HuffPost will also launch several more foreign editions including Arabic and Australian editions.
The site will also relaunch in May with a design overhaul for its 10-year anniversary, Huffington reported in a memo to employees.
“Our commitment in the coming year is to build on what has always been at the core of our DNA,” Huffington said in the memo. “To start, at the end of our contract in 2015, we will be ending our relationship with AP and building our own news service in-house. At the same time we will be doubling down on original reporting and bringing together a new investigative team.”
The website’s boss also announced that new international editions will go live sometime early in the new year.
HuffPost Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim also said that the site will be adding reporters all around the world to feed their 12 foreign editions.
But the site is still struggling to turn a profit despite the “hundreds of millions” in annual revenue as reported by AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong.
After purchasing Huffington Post for $315 million in 2010, AOL had projected that the website would be earning a profit by 2014, but with the expansions and redesigns, that projection has once again been put off to an undecided future date.
On the other hand, despite all the talk of expanding the site’s original reporting, other sources have said that the company has slackened on its commitment to such reporting.
“I was drawn to HuffPost by Arianna’s vision of building the 21st century newsroom,” former senior columnist Lisa Belkin said in May. “For a time, I felt like that’s what they were doing. And then I felt like the mission changed.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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