The Huffington Post started as an aggregate political blog, but founder Arianna Huffington is now eyeing something bigger: local news coverage.
Chicago will serve as Huffington’s local guinea pig. From The Guardian:
[Arianna] Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in “dozens of US cities”. The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.
Similar hyper-local efforts have struggled to achieve sustainability. The Guardian says the Huffington Post received $10 million in funding in 2006 and 2007, and the company is pursuing additional investments to fund the local expansion.