Huffington Post Starts Italian-Language Web Site

The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Thursday, September 27, 2012

Huffington Post Starts Italian-Language Web Site

By ERIC PFANNER

PARIS — Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who left office last year in the depths of the economic crisis, resurfaced this week in a new place: the Italian-language Web site of The Huffington Post.

An interview with Mr. Berlusconi, in which he insisted that speculation about his private life was “disinformation and defamation,” gave The Huffington Post a typically juicy scoop as it accelerated its international expansion. The Italian site, L’Huffington Post, which made its debut Tuesday, is the fifth version of the Internet news outlet outside the United States, following its rollout in Canada, Britain, France and Spain.

Arianna Huffington, the site’s founder, said she did not plan to stop there. Germany is next, with an introduction planned for January, and discussions are under way with potential business partners in Japan, South Korea, India and Brazil, executives said.

“There are obviously huge advantages editorially to being in all these countries, when the world is so closely linked by all these economic problems,” Ms. Huffington said by telephone from Milan.

In addition to the interview with Mr. Berlusconi, L’Huffington Post featured contributions from a range of bloggers on its opening day, including Giulio Tremonti, a former Italian finance minister, and Oscar Farinetti, founder of the food and wine emporium Eataly, which has branches in Italy, Japan and New York.

To try to demonstrate its political impartiality — an unusual feature in Italy, where newspapers tend to have a left- or right-wing bias — the site featured voices from both sides of the spectrum. While Mr. Berlusconi and other figures from his government were featured, so was Maurizio Landini, a labor leader.

Some critics said, however, that they would have preferred to see fresher journalistic faces rather than the people in charge when Italy got into its financial mess.

“It’s an interesting project, but it might be better if they invested more in young journalists rather than old politicians,” said Francesco Siliato, a professor of communications at Milan Polytechnic University. “The power of The Huffington Post in the United States was young people, not politicians.”

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.