SM: To what do you owe its success?
Huffington: We arrived in the midst of a "perfect storm" for a political news and blog platform. Both Internet news and "blogging" have become wildly popular and the primary sources of information for millions of Americans. Our value added has been combining those two elements. That and good fortune—I never discount the role that luck played in our success!

SM: What are your thoughts on the idea that women are turned off by hard news and only intrigued by pop culture items or even dumbed-down content?
Huffington: It’s a ludicrous premise. All you have to do is look at the number of women making news, reporting the news, blogging about the news to know that women are every bit as interested in hard news as men. They might favor different delivery systems, but the caricature that women just want to sit around reading People magazine and watching soap operas is very moldy. As for [HuffPost] readers, the gender breakdown is roughly equal.