Huffington Post Loses Its Huffington

The Huffington Post will soon be without its namesake. Arianna Huffington is leaving the site she founded 11 years ago, reports the Wall Street Journal. The 66-year-old says she will devote all her time to a new health venture, Thrive Global, that launches in November. (Huffington of late has become a champion of the benefits of a good night's sleep.) Her role at the Huffington Post had been uncertain after Verizon bought parent AOL last year for $4.4 billion.

“I really thought I could do both, but as we started building it up, I realized that it really needed my full attention,” she tells the Journal, referring to Thrive Global. “It is important to know when one door closes and another opens and I felt that moment had arrived.” Making matters more complicated was Verizon's recent purchase of Yahoo, which does some of the same kind of work as HuffPo, notes CNNMoney. It quotes a former editor as saying that the Yahoo deal in particular made Huffington's departure "inevitable." (More Arianna Huffington stories.)