Arianna Huffington shares her views on leadership, social media and the role of college students

In the years since its launch in 2005, the Huffington Post has been the subject of both admiration and controversy. On Saturday, its current editor-in-chief, Arianna Huffington, will appear at Royce Hall on behalf of non-profit organization Insight University as the first speaker for its “Transformational Leaders” series. Huffington, also a nationally syndicated columnist and author of 13 books, spoke with the Daily Bruin’s Lenika Cruz about what’s next for the Huffington Post, the double-edged sword of Twitter and how college students can make the best of a bad economy.

Daily Bruin: What do you plan to discuss at your talk this weekend?

Arianna Huffington: I’m obviously particularly interested in speaking to a young audience because I think that “¦ increasingly there’s been a lot of disenchantment with leadership, politically, in business and in the media. I’m basically going to speak about the kind of leadership that involves looking in the mirror and finding the leader in ourselves. … A lot of young people are turning to leadership as a way to revitalize communities to fix problems as opposed to robbing others to do so.

DB: What advice would you give to today’s college students, many of whom are struggling through the current economic climate and the murky potential of the job market?

AH: We have written a lot on the Huffington Post about this problem. We think it’s a really major problem of our time. I think that’s where the need is important ““ to stay in the political process: vote, organize, challenge this increasing tuition. At the same time, (it’s important) to look at what … they feel most passionate about. In the past (there) was the assumption, (that there was a choice) between what you were most passionate about, and doing what was most safe, predictable. Now we’re realizing that the truth is there isn’t. Those jobs aren’t as available. So you might as well follow your own dreams and passions and make them work.

DB: Traditional journalism is searching for new business models in light of the decline of print and the rise of new digital technologies. Do you think the Huffington Post, as a content-aggregator website, provides a sustainable business model for innovators in the media?

AH: (The Huffington Post) is a journalistic enterprise that at the moment has over 400 full-time journalists and editors on payroll. It aggregates, as well as invites, different voices from all across the world, different ages, different jobs, different states of life, to write about whatever interests them. Right now, we have over 30,000 bloggers, some well-known, some not. (The four aspects of the Huffington Post are) original reporting, aggregation, blogging and community. We’ve received over 130 million comments since the beginning of the Huffington Post. It’s a way for multiple voices to participate in the debate and also to be discovered in the process. Across over 60 sections, politics to style to books, our business model is entirely advertising-supported.

DB: Is there anything exciting that you’re currently working on, whether with the Huffington Post or in some other sphere?

AH: In January, we announced the HuffPost Streaming Network, a 24/7 live-streaming network that uses the HuffPost universe ““ the stories, editors, reporters, bloggers, and community ““ as its real-time script. The network will be built around segments spotlighting the biggest and most engaging stories HuffPost is covering at any given moment and using them as the jumping-off points for conversations, commentary and comedy. People aren’t interested in being talked at anymore. They want to be part of the conversation, and a big part of what HuffPost Streaming Network will do is help start those conversations and invite everyone to participate.

DB: You’re quite an active tweeter. Why is that, and do you have tips for how the average person can make productive use of social media?

AH: What’s important isn’t how much you use it, but how you use it. All the new social media tools, including Twitter, can help us bear witness more powerfully, connect and engage, or they can help us be even more distracted. The bottom line is that you can use Twitter to disseminate meaningless scoops – like, for instance, the breaking news that Donald Trump was going to endorse Mitt Romney – or you can use Twitter to bring to life Biz Stone’s inspirational statement that, “Twitter is not a triumph of tech; it’s a triumph of humanity.”

Email Cruz at [email protected].