Arianna Huffington Delivers Keynote, Receives Award at E&P Interactive Conference

By: E&P Staff Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, received the Outstanding Achievement Award this morning at the E&P/Mediaweek Interactive Media Conference and Trade Show in Las Vegas. She then delivered a keynote speech and answered questions from the audience.

The Huffington Post, now three years old, has soared in popularity and influence and has now surpassed even the Drudge Report, according to some Web traffic measurements.

Huffington is author of the new book "Right Is Wrong," and part of her talk focused on the current partisan political environment and how the media chooses to cover or ignore important issues. She revealed that her site would soon unveil new topic areas on sports, books, and other areas, and will expand its video offerings before the big political conventions this fall. The site has already launched a "comedy" section.

She opened her talk by saying that "when I was growing up in Greece, I never imagined I would receive a top achievement award for something called blogging."

Huffington hit upon the idea of the media too often presenting the "truth" by offering commentary from opposing sides and leaving it at that, when there are many cases when the facts line up mainly on one side -- for example, on global warming. She also criticized the portrayal of the situation in Iraq as a "mixed bag" when in reality it is a "catastrophe." She compared this to going to a doctor and being told you have a brain tumor, but at least your acne has cleared up -- a "mixed bag."

The media also has "A.D.D." she said, exposing important stories one day and then forgetting about them to chase "missing blondes" in Aruba. At least blogs, she said, quoting Jay Rosen, are "the courts of last appeal."

Huffington said there would "always be print" but predicted a "hybrid" future in which sites such as hers take the best of traditional journalism and do more of their own original reporting. The Huffington Post, in fact, has started billing itself as a "Web newspaper."

Several attendees in the audience asked about blog ethics and policing far-out comments. She lamented that technology had not yet produced really strong filtering devices, but touted her site's actiive efforts to monitor and delete both blog postings and comments that go over the line.

She closed by saying, "all of us in the media have a role to play -- and a responsibility to be truth tellers the best way we can."

The conference ends today with the EPpy Awards luncheon.