New CJR Feature Goes In-Depth with Huffington Post following Pulitzer Prize Win

New York, NY (April 16, 2012)—Yesterday, The  Huffington Post received its first Pulitzer Prize. The site's David Wood won in the National Reporting  category, for what the board called a “riveting exploration” of the challenges facing wounded soldiers post combat.

The prize marks a moment of high recognition for The Huffington Post, whose creation, nature, and influence are the subject of Columbia Journalism Review's  May/June cover story, “Six Degrees of Aggregation: How the Huffington Post ate the Internet.” Following the prize announcement, CJR published its feature, which you can read online here in its entirety.

“The Huffington Post has defied expectations en route to what seems to be a runaway success, and  rewritten  many of the rules of our business,” says Cyndi Stivers, CJR's editor-in-chief. “We felt it was important to give The Huffington Post the long treatment.”

In “Six Degrees of Aggregation,” CJR contributing editor Michael Shapiro writes that The Huffington Post is in the business of viral content—a business in which original journalism plays a relatively small part, though the honor of a Pulitzer shines a great light on it. Through interviews with principals and employees past and present, Shapiro highlights the skills, from search engine optimization to social networking, as well as the timing and luck that combined to deliver a vast audience to Huffington Post.

“Before its purchase by AOL in February 2011, HuffPost was not a property that had produced much in the way of revenue,” writes Shapiro, who also notes that the site “did little in the way of breaking stories, the industry's typical pathway to recognition.” Less than one year later, however, Shapiro writes that “Huffington Post could lay claim to a widely shared perception of its growing influence.”

The announcement of the Pulitzer Prize adds another layer of critical discourse to conversations about The Huffington Post's model and its repercussions for news media and journalism. CJR is pleased to contribute its reporting and analysis to the discussion.

Shapiro and Stivers are available for comment. CJR will publish “Six Degrees of Aggregation” in its May/June issue, which you may subscribe to here.

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Founded in 1961, the Columbia Journalism Review's mission is to encourage and stimulate excellence in journalism. In its bimonthly magazine and daily website, CJR offers peerless press analysis, journalism tools, and discussions of the evolving media world.


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