The popular news and commentary website The Huffington Post will launch its own Brazilian edition in partnership with Brazil's Grupo Abril, Huffington Post Media Group announced. The release date hasn't been released yet.
The publication is the most recent to be lured by the good fortunes of Brazil's media market. Last year, The New York Times announced its intention to launch a Portuguese site in Brazil. The edition was set to launch this year but was postponed.
"Brazil has more than 100 million Internet users, it has the 5th largest audience in the world, and is growing rapidly - 7.6% per year until 2016 (estimate and marketer-2012)", said Jimmy Maymann, executive president of The Huffington Post Media Group.
The publication already has different editions in eight other countries and has established partnerships with local media groups across five continents. The Brazilian edition precedes the launch of an edition in Germany, together with the magazine Focus Burda's Tomorrow.
Founded in 2005, the groundbreaking site started as a blog and news aggregator and in 2012 became the first commercial digital publication to win a Pulitzer Prize.
In 2011, the Huffington Post was bought by Aol (America Online) for $315 million and gathers 47 million visitors per month in the U.S. and 77 million worldwide. The site brings together the contributions of over 50,000 bloggers around the world.
According to statements made on Monday by Arianna Huffington and Fabio Barbosa, CEO of Abril, the Brazilian edition of the popular American site will join another 40 websites and editorials and about 30 titles available for tablet owned by Grupo Abril.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
