America Online (AOL) announced on Feb. 7 that they are buying The Huffington
Post, a popular online newspaper, for a reported sum of $315 million.
The Huffington Post’s owner and founder, Arianna Huffington, will become
the leader of the newly created The Huffington Post Media Group and oversee the
combination of the two companies’ content on the Internet.
According to their press release, the integration of AOL and the Huffington Post
will reach 117 million people in the United States and 270 million people globally.
This union shows the attempt to save AOL, which is struggling to keep up with
the ever-changing Internet. According to the Wall Street Journal, AOL’s ad venue
dropped 29 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
But will this purchase affect the content on the relatively liberal site? Lizzi
Bonczek, sophomore environmental science and policy major, doesn’t read The
Huffington Post, but said, “A big company will change things. There will be more
restrictions.”