Business Verizon seeks buyer for HuffPost website - Telecoms group raises sale with potential acquirers as part of digital media retreat

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Verizon is sounding out potential buyers for the HuffPost website, in the latest phase of the US telecoms group’s retreat from the digital media business.

In recent weeks Verizon has raised a HuffPost sale with potential acquirers, according to two people familiar with the discussions. No formal sale process has been launched and talks remain at an early stage. A company spokesperson declined to comment.

The attempt to sell the progressive news site is a sign of how Verizon is continuing to slim down the family of dotcom businesses it amassed with the costly acquisition of Yahoo and AOL, assets it wrote down by almost $5bn earlier this year. Last month Verizon sold Tumblr for a reported “nominal” amount, after buying the social network for $1.1bn in 2013.


Verizon formed its media division from the merger of AOL, which Verizon bought for $4.4bn in 2015, and Yahoo, which it paid $4.5bn in 2017. At the time Tim Armstrong, the former AOL chief executive who pioneered the digital strategy, said the tie-up would create “the best company for consumer media”.

Since the time of the deal, digital media groups once hailed as the future of the news business have struggled to meet the sky-high expectations for the sector, especially as online advertising revenues have been swallowed up by Google and Facebook.

Some companies such as Rookie have closed while newsrooms at HuffPost, BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox have faced job cuts. Consolidation has swept the sector as financially-strapped digital media groups seek scale. In just the past month Vice Media acquired Refinery29, the women-focused millennial website, while Group Nine bought PopSugar and Vox acquired New York Media, owner of the namesake magazine.

The Huffington Post, a liberal news site founded in 2005 by a group of publishers including Arianna Huffington, was bought by AOL for $315m in 2011. It operates across more than a dozen countries through licensing agreements.

In January Verizon announced that it would reduce the staff numbers at its digital media division by around 7 per cent, cutting about 800 jobs, including some at HuffPost. The news website also closed its German arm, HuffPost Deutschland, in March.

 

[Stoneheart]

A smart person would be attentive enough to know that HuffPost is a moneypit that can't draw revenue to save its own life, as seen in this situation in particular.
I'm betting some exceptional upstarts looking to prove a point will go for it.

Its very easy to make with that site. fire everybody but the tech guys and 2 editors, hire a bunch of freelance npcs for 25$ an article and only run Ads for Cuck sex sites and freerange soy.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

George Soros

 

[The Real SVP]

Its very easy to make with that site. fire everybody but the tech guys and 2 editors, hire a bunch of freelance npcs for 25$ an article and only run Ads for Cuck sex sites and freerange soy.

That's how most of these sites already work. Except that the tech guys are outsourced, the editors are also freelancers, and the ads are provided by an automated ad-network.

 

[Jub-Jub]

Either that or Vice will scoop it up when the price goes down because they, too, are exceptional.

IIRC Vice was also consolidating a few months ago due to massive losses, so it's unlikely to be them as they can't spare a dime. I see this as more evidence of Obama's propaganda money fund keeping all of these garbage sites viable.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

IIRC Vice was also consolidating a few months ago due to massive losses, so it's unlikely to be them as they can't spare a dime. I see this as more evidence of Obama's propaganda money fund keeping all of these garbage sites viable.

I guess they'll beg Soros to give some money when the day Obama's propaganda money fund will be empty will arrive more sooner then they thought.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The clickbait mills really are dying if Huffington Post is in this bad of a shape. They were one of the first clickbait mills to get really big in the late 2000's, even if VICE and Buzzfeed sort of eclipsed them for a while. Whoever's buying this will be wasting their money if they want to continue it.

At best, someone like Bezos or Fuckerberg could buy it on the cheap and keep the archives up for some other project of theirs. Even then, it's not a good investment.

Although if a right-wing group like Breitbart or The Daily Wire buys it and has it re-branded it as a right-wing clickbait mill, that would be hilarious. The only thing more poetically hilarious and ironic would be if Gavin McInnes and Tim Pool teamed up to buy VICE and re-branded it accordingly.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. The sooner the clickbait mills die out, the better.

 

[Soap Sniffer]

I will bid $15 for it and transform it into a porn site that exclusivly caters to white, straight people

 

[AltisticRight]

I'll start the bid by offering 1 cent, chinaman currency.

 

[Nguyen Van Phuoc]

I have 5000 dollars worth of Monopoly money that I can give for the Huffington Post.

 

[mr.moon1488]

I want to buy it, and turn it into a porn site called the Muffington post.

 

[Secret Asshole]

The Chinese should buy it and turn it into an official outlet of the CCP and make all those 'woke' journalists into commie moles by giving them 'work laptops' which harvest everyone's data around them like a spy black hole.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

Google will buy up all the clickbait woke media. They already promote it as 'trusted sources' and are biased towards it when you search on Google News.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Someone will buy it, likely a shady consortium with funding from of third world dictatorships in a few shell companies or LLCs. It’s usually how it goes when these sites are mid-spiral.

Tencent? I hope the Chinks buy it so we can have Russian bots vs Chinese bots

 

[Water-T]

Wait....so AOL still exists?

Only in theory.

 

[Stoneheart]

Only in theory.

but those 50 hour free internet CDs are still good, Right?

 

[Beavis]

Someone will buy it, likely a shady consortium with funding from of third world dictatorships in a few shell companies or LLCs. It’s usually how it goes when these sites are mid-spiral.

These sites now have zero monetary value, but can be useful to someone with some money to burn and an agenda to push.

edit: lol AOL has an app

 

[Overly Serious]

People buy journalistic outlets for two reasons these days. The first is to gut them and make a short-term profit by cutting every cost they can until the inevitable collapse. The second is to have an organ with which to beat political parties. I doubt Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post to make money. He bought it so that senators would know they'd get bad press if they displeased him.

Pull is worth more than money. HuffPost clearly doesn't have the influence it was hoped for.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Its very easy to make with that site. fire everybody but the tech guys and 2 editors, hire a bunch of freelance npcs for 25$ an article and only run Ads for Cuck sex sites and freerange soy.

they can’t do that anymore. At least not in California, the new law says a news site can only pay a freelancer for 32 articles/year. What little value HP had via cheap freelance slave labor was just cratered by the Far Left California Dems.

 

[Noideawhattopick]

Change the name to Cuckpost, put a few more obese disgusting bitches in the upper echelons of it and presto, you have the perfect cuck news website. And the best thing is you don't even have to rehire staff, just keep the old trash.
A win for the cucks and the kids of their wives.

 

[Stoneheart]

At least not in California, the new law says a news site can only pay a freelancer for 32 articles/year. What little value HP had via cheap freelance slave labor was just cratered by the Far Left California Dems.

there are enough fags in CA to have them only make 35 arcticles a year