HuffPost, Breaking From Its Roots, Ends Unpaid Contributions<br />But Ms. Polgreen said in an interview that unfiltered platforms had devolved into “cacophonous, messy,<br />hard-to-hear places where voices get drowned out and where the loudest shouting voice prevails.”<br />“Certainly the environment where fake news is flourishing is one where it gets harder<br />and harder to support the idea of a ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ kind of publishing platform,” Ms. Polgreen said.<br />Though she is closing one of the site’s most populist components, she has also articulated an inclusive vision for the site inspired by big-city tabloids<br />and local television news and aimed at an ideologically agnostic population of Americans who are “never going to pay for news.”<br />Her first year has not been without its challenges<br />In 2008, Mayhill Fowler, a woman who said she had sold her car to fund travel on the campaign trail, set off a firestorm when she quoted Barack Obama at a fund-raiser saying<br />that working-class voters “cling to guns or religion.”<br />But the site’s days of encouraging everyday citizens to report on the news are over.<br />The elimination of the platform, which drove 10 to 15 percent of the site’s traffic, is only the latest<br />change for the site since Ms. Polgreen, 42, took the helm after Ms. Huffington stepped down.<br />The decision was rooted as much in a move to declutter the site as in Ms. Polgreen’s desire to focus on quality reporting<br />and minimize unvetted stories at a time when there is so much misinformation online.
