Ranked 29th in “Forbes” magazine’s list of the most powerful women in the world, Ariana Huffington has become a central figure in the media landscape in just a few years. In May 2005, she launched “The Huffington Post”, an online site featuring news, opinions and blogs written by a wide range of contributors, particularly big names. It quickly became a benchmark, attracting 37 million readers a month in the US in 2017. In 2012, one of its journalists, David Wood, was honoured for his work on American veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his investigation. This is only the second time that an online site has been awarded this distinction.
Now known as “The HuffPost”, the site covers all national and international news, first in the United States, then in Canada. It continued to expand in Europe and North Africa. The free site’s revenue comes solely from advertising. The editorial approach favours a certain taste for the spectacular. Buoyed by her success, Ariana Huffington has become emblematic of the communications revolution that has taken place in recent years.
At the age of 66, the empress of digital media, who has left the online newspaper she founded, which has since become an international empire, has made an explosive announcement. Ariana Huffington is now devoting herself to her start-up, the online platform “Thrive Global”, which has set itself the mission of curbing the epidemic of stress and burn-out by offering companies and individuals sustainable, science-based solutions for improving well-being. With this new risk-taking venture, the American entrepreneur brilliantly embodies the myth of permanent reinvention.
From biographies on Maria Callas in 1981 and Pablo Picasso in 1989, she has moved on to other themes in her recent books “Thrive – the Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom and Wonder” (2015) and “The Sleep Revolution – Transforming Your Life, One night at a Time” (2016). Drawing on her personal experience, she explains that success cannot be measured merely in terms of power and money, but also in terms of well-being.
