The Huffington Post Media Group and Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso to Partner in New Joint Venture: L’Huffington Post Italy

The Huffington Post Media Group and Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso today announced plans for the creation of L’Huffington Post Italy, an Italian language version of The Huffington Post, the popular American news and opinion web destination. The partnership will combine The Huffington Post’s powerful platform with local expertise and a strong Italian editorial network. L’Huffington Post Italy is recruiting an editorial team in preparation for its launch before the end of the year. The announcement was jointly made by Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group and Monica Mondardini, CEO of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso.

L’Huffington Post Italy will combine the local editorial expertise of Gruppo Espresso, publisher of the first Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, and of the most widely respected newsmagazine, L’Espresso, with The Huffington Post’s pioneering combination of original reporting, aggregation, a leading-edge commenting forum and dynamic social engagement tools, and a vibrant platform for a wide range of bloggers.

The Huffington Post is part of The Huffington Post Media Group, a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information, which includes The Huffington Post, Moviefone, Engadget, TechCrunch, Patch, and StyleList. The Group’s diverse network of sites combines journalism, technology, engagement, and video to reach a global audience on every platform. The Group has over 20,000 bloggers -- from politicians and celebrities to academics and policy experts -- who contribute in real-time on a wide-range of topics making news today. Among those who have blogged are Nora Ephron, Larry Page, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Bill Maher, Robert Redford, Madonna, Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Gates, and Charlie Rose. The Huffington Post has 36 million unique visitors a month, per comScore (December 2011). The Huffington Post UK and The Huffington Post Canada both launched last year. Le Huffington Post France launches on Monday, Le Huffington Post Quebec is scheduled to launch in February, and El Huffington Post Spain is scheduled to launch in March.

Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso is a leading Italian multimedia branded company. Its properties span in all the following sectors: Publishing, Radio, Television, Digital and Advertising. The Group publishes the first national daily newspaper la Repubblica, 18 local daily newspapers, and the weekly magazine L'Espresso. It broadcasts three national radio stations (including Radio Deejay) and it operates in the Television sector. The Group publishes Repubblica.it, the most visited news site in Italian language on the web. The aggregated properties of Gruppo Espresso have 10.1 million of unique visitors (Audiweb Panel, November 2011). The chairman is Carlo De Benedetti and the CEO is Monica Mondardini.