Arianna Huffington: Subscriptions Are For Porn
May 28, 2009 at 14:40 PM EDT
At D7 today, Kara Swisher sat down with Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington and Washington Post's Digital Chief Katharine Weymouth to discuss a topic that has been beaten to death: old vs. new media. Much of the interview was spent massaging each other's egos, with each praising the other for the quality of their respective publication's journalism. But Huffington spiced things up when Swisher broached the issue of monetization. Huffington denied that HuffPo would ever consider subscriptions, saying "We absolutely never imagine subscriptions. Unless you’re selling porn, and especially “very weird porn”, you shouldn’t sell subscriptions." Swisher cited a Penn Schoen & Berland survey that found that 5% of people would pay for blogs and 92% of people don't pay for online content today.