The Huffington Post Media Group has partnered with Fairfax Media to launch an Australian edition.
The partnership will see HuffPost and Fairfax establish a team of editors and reporters based in Sydney. The site is said to launch in quarter two this year.
The launch of HuffPost Australia is the next international news brand to have landed on Aussie shores. It's joined by The Guardian which launched an Australian edition in 2013 as well as the Daily Mail who partnered with Mi9 to launch in February of last year.
The media giant touted its launch in July last year with Koda Wang, general manager of international at The Huffington Post, saying: "This is the year we are finally getting ready to launch in Australia. Our ultimate goal is to be the dominant market player in every market we go into."
While it is not clear the exact arrangements of The Huffington Post and Fairfax joint venture, when partnering in other markets it is common for the HuffPost to partner with local news organisations in order to bolster initial sales and operations capabilities on the ground. In 2012 the news organisation partnered with Le Monde and Les Nouvelles Editions Indépendantes to launch the french edition of the Huffington Post. In 2013 the Huffington Post did the same partnering with The Asahi Shimbun to launch its first international edition in an Asian country.
The announcement was jointly made by Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, and Greg Hywood, chief executive officer and managing director of Fairfax Media.
“I’m thrilled that HuffPost and Fairfax Media are joining forces to launch HuffPost Australia,” Huffington said. “It’s not only a milestone in HuffPost’s global expansion – we are now in 14 countries, on six continents - but a tremendous opportunity to expand our global conversation.
Fairfax’s independent values, proud journalistic heritage and digital expertise make them the perfect partner as we pursue our shared mission of telling Australia’s most important stories and providing a platform for Australians to tell their stories.”
“We’re delighted to be partnering with leading global digital news and opinion website, The Huffington Post, to launch an Australian edition,” said Hywood. “HuffPost Australia will be part of Fairfax’s expanding portfolio of digital assets -- providing great journalism and content to audiences, and valuable connections to those audiences for advertisers. We look forward to working closely with The Huffington Post to build the brand and bring its digital media innovation to Australia.”
HuffPost’s executive editor of International, Nicholas Sabloff, and Wang, will spearhead the launch.
HuffPost’s integrated global newsroom has hundreds of editors collaborating in real-time across 13 markets to create content in eight languages using a custom unified tech platform with more than 85,000 bloggers contributing their own views.
The Huffington Post had 117 million unique visitors in the U.S. in December 2014 (comScore, December 2014).
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