Local Voices: A Note From Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group
Today we launch a great new chapter for Patch.com, the national network of hyperlocal sites currently covering community life in 800 towns across America.
When Kenny Lerer and I started The Huffington Post on May 9, 2005, we would have been hard-pressed to imagine this moment. With The Huffington Post, the idea was to take the sort of conversations found around dinner tables and at book parties–about politics and books and art and music and food and sex–and put them online, open them up, and invite interesting people to participate, creating a one-stop site for news and opinion with an attitude, in real-time. Our merger with AOL, Patch's parent company, in February, allowed us to broadcast those conversations to a much wider audience. By combining The Huffington Post's attitude, journalistic acumen, and sheer energy with AOL's resources and technical expertise, we were able, as we say, to …