There has been a lot of chatter surrounding the partnership between Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post, questioning if the two publishers key propositions are two similar and too competitive for a partnership to ever truly work, however chief executive of Fairfax, Greg Hywood said it was “one of those relationships made in heaven”.
Hywood was speaking at the official launch of the Australian arm of the global publication last night and he said the partnership felt very natural and something the media company had to investigate when it heard that it was a possibility.
“When we learnt a partnership with The Huffington Post was desired by that organisation it was an instinctive reaction by us because we were the right partner – because partnerships are based not just on interests, and there are obvious great commercial interests in two organisations getting together, but also on values and the editorial values that these two organisations share are absolutely aligned and exceptional,” he said.
“As we met each other across our two organisations it became really apparent that we could work together really well and deliver for our audience and our customers and particularly our advertisers exceptional results, because of the alignment of our interests, the alignment of our audiences and and as I said, the alignment of those values.”
HuffPost Australia launched on 18 August a day ahead of schedule and early on there were musings that the new player would take share away from The Sydney Morning Hearld.
CEO of the HuffPost Australia Chris Janz refuted those claims early on, telling AdNews previously: “The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are really strong, locally relevant properties that serve audiences beautifully and I think our offering is different. We're serving a slightly different audience and what we're bringing them is not the best Sydney news or the best Melbourne news but a different national perspective,” he said.
“I honestly don't buy the argument and I find it curious that people say we'll harm Fairfax. It's almost that they're saying our offering is directly competitive with theirs and I don't think that's the case.”
Newly minted global CEO of The Huffington Post, Jared Grusd, flew in for the event saying: “The reason why I wanted to spend my second week on the job here in Australia, is a lot of people are working very hard to be a true leader in the marketplace,” he said.
Grusd agreed with Hywood noting the strength of the shared values between the publishers.
“You [Hywood] couldn't have said the words better, I was not part of the formation of the partnership, but I do believe partnership are based on values.”
“In the end all we have are our relationships and or integrity and if we combine those values together we can really do extraordinary things,” he added.
Hywood also noted that the recently reported deal between Fairfax, HuffPost and Dentsu Aegis, which sees the media agency giant having exclusive access to HuffPost inventory was “an extraordinary commercial relationship”.
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