HuffPo to launch British edition this summer

American blog the Huffington Post will set up a UK version of itself in the summer, bringing its “Internet Newspaper” model to the UK news market.

They are planning to set up a UK news team and then hire unpaid bloggers to write columns – as they do in their US publication.

The new money from their acquisition by AOL has given the HuffPo the backing they needed to make the new venture possible. They’re also setting up similar sites for France and Brazil.

Founder Arianna Huffington made the unexpected announcement on a visit to the UK where she was speaking at AOL UK and at a Guardian Media conference.

In terms of the UK online news market, it will likely have an impact on the Guardian online and on the Mail Online – currently the most popular newspaper site in the world. However the Guardian could be more likely to suffer since its online site and the HuffPo target a similar readership.

Clearly the answer to our question Why is there is no British Huffington Post? was – because the Huffington Post haven’t set one up yet…

[via TheWallBlog]