Arianna Huffington makes waves on the Web

Three years ago, a woman known mostly for bombastic political commentaries and a flamboyant lifestyle entered a realm about which she knew almost nothing.

Today, Arianna Huffington has the media world buzzing. She jokingly refers to herself as a "cyber slut." Others call her Citizen Huff.

Her site — HuffingtonPost.com — has blossomed from a handful of staff to 50 and an audience of nearly 15 million visitors a month. Her Internet newspaper is attracting eyeballs and advertising that might otherwise gravitate to traditional media outlets. The site is also helping to set the media’s agenda.

When Sen. John McCain's wife, Cindy, touted her favorite "family recipes" — HuffingtonPost.com revealed that they'd been lifted from the Food Network. In a private meeting, Sen. Barack Obama complained that small-town voters turned to God and guns because they were "bitter" — a story that first appeared on HuffintonPost.com

Stories reported by ordinary citizens, many recruited by Huffington herself, make up so-called "off the bus" features. It’s a format she started with New York University Prof. Jay Rosen.

“We wanted to go out and empower people to report on what they saw and heard with their own eyes and ears,” said Rosen. "And we knew some of those people would have access professional journalists didn't have."

For the 57-year-old Huffington, it's been a dazzling, dizzying ride. Born into a middle-class Greek family, she won a scholarship to Cambridge University in England and became the first foreign-born female to head its famed debating society. Later she married — and divorced —Michael Huffington, a multimillionaire Texas oilman.

Today, Huffington’s world is packed with the glitz and glam of the red carpet, jousting with literary lions in lecture halls and breathless, kiss-kiss luncheons with fashionistas, whisked to and fro, never quickly enough.

She has been called just about everything — from influential, on Time Magazine's list of the World's Top 100, to "the Sir Edmund Hillary of social climbers."

Now the one-time queen of conservatism, turned liberal firebrand, is making waves again.

“It's an incredible time to be alive and to be operating in this new media space and to be basically inventing things as we go along, every day," she told her audience at a recent lecture at The New School in Manhattan.

She’s been roiling the mainstream media with what, for her, once seemed unimaginable. Three years ago, Huffington barely knew what a blog was. Friends warned her: Don't go there.

TV schedule Business Nation CNBC's money news magazine David Faber, Chief Correspondent A new episode of Business Nation will premiere on Sunday, June 1 at 10 p.m. and will repeat on: — Friday, June 6, 9 p.m./12 a.m. — Sunday, June 8, 12 a.m. — Tuesday, June 17, 9 p.m./12 a.m. — Sunday, June 22 8 p.m.

“I saw the potential,” she said in an interview with CNBC. “I'd always been fascinated by how do you break through the static to change minds?”

The so-called Bittergate flap over Obama’s remarks didn't just dominate political coverage because it wounded Obama's campaign. It also got Huffington a tongue-lashing from Obama sympathizers like former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat.

“How many people were talking about an off-the-record comment he made at a fundraiser in San Francisco until it appeared in the Huffington Post?” said Kerrey. “Nobody was talking about it."

Which of course is precisely what HuffingtonPost.com intended.

“Political news should reflect more of the population,” said Rosen. “And come from more places. That's what we're trying to do."

Huffington's management style is gently hands-on, whether running a staff meeting from her luxurious California home or from the company's headquarters in New York, housed atop a trendy grocery store.

“My management style is: You're in a green light until there is a red light," she said

Huffington counsels employees; sometimes, she issues directives. Sometimes, she even lowers the boom. When she’s had to fire someone, she says she tried to keep it “pleasant.”

“I don't believe in unpleasant firings," she said.

Arianna Huffington doesn't just promote — and recruit, relentlessly. She plows through hundreds of emails from readers. She also taps into her remarkable network of the famous and well-connected.

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