New Haven Independent

“It’s legitimate as a journalist to take a stand if you think the truth is clearly on one side or the other,” Huffington said Saturday morning, before she took the stage as keynote speaker for Yale’s Women in Leadership conference.

Huffington, a powerhouse media figure known for her flamboyant flip-flop from hard-line Gingrich-supporter to smoking progressive, hosts the NPR show “Left, Right & Center”. She is the founder and editor of the Huffington Post, an online news site at the forefront of the new web journalism — a site that does not shrink from telling its version of the truth.

Originally focused on political news, the site now reports entertainment, business, and arts and living sections. It also publishes a plethora of blogs from journalists, politicians, college students, and concerned citizens. High-profile bloggers include Ben Affleck, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi.

Bloggers and writers for the Huffington Post do not equivocate. Huffington condemned the modern media for “a sense of moral relativism,” and emphasized that at her publication, “My belief is that we can cover politics in a way that is not on one hand or the other, in a way that takes a stand but is fair, accurate, and has a clear understanding of where the truth lies.” This belief extends not only to professional journalists covering politics, but to anyone who thinks they know something about anything. “Off the Bus,” a Huffington Post citizen journalism project, encourages readers to sign up to blog about something that interests them, monitor local campaigns, or provide expertise on particular subjects.

As an intern for the Independent, which also advocates citizen journalism, I wondered how the Huffington Post walked the line of encouraging freedom of speech while refusing to endorse offensive content which could prove detrimental to the community. Blogs and comments — like Independent readers, her readers can post user comments on blogs and articles —a re monitored 24/7, she said, “and we take down anything that is particularly obnoxious.” The Huffington Post believes that strong, vocal communities must be monitored, a tricky concept in the pubescent world of online journalism.

Huffington, who was born in Greece, lives in Los Angeles, and has published 11 books, spoke to a congregation of Yale women in the law school auditorium, sparking regular laughs with her heavy accent and self-deprecating humor.

“This accent is for real,” Huffington declared toward the beginning of her speech. She told a story of when she spoke in some public forum and joked about being an ordinary American from Fresno, California, putting on a Greek accent for “that ethnic look.” She received a stream of emails — some from native Fresno-ites — asking how she had perfected her “ethnic” accent.

Targeting Stereotypes

Opening a conference of young female leaders, Huffington focused on the balance many women must strike between embracing natural female qualities and evading stereotypes.

Women are needed in leadership right now, Huffington said, in order to “humanize” the political setting. “The best of female leaders bring an incredible amount of empathy and nurturing to their leadership,” she said. “We have to be careful not to stereotype the genders, but that’s a great gift we can bring.”

But not all female qualities are conducive to leadership, she acknowledged. “We are much more reluctant to claim power” than men, she asserted. Earlier in her speech she described a female problem “with wanting approval. We like to be liked.”

Huffington’s most recent book, published this year, is titled On Becoming Fearless:…in Love, Work, and Life. Her speech continually meandered back to this theme; she called “establishing a foundation of fearlessness” essential to establishing oneself as a leader. “Fearlessness is not the absence of fear,” she explained. “It’s speaking out and doing what you want to do even when you’re afraid.”

As a woman, she said, this can mean ignoring your inner critical voice. “I call mine my obnoxious roommate living in my head,” she dead-panned. “The outside critics, you can leave them at the door when you come home, but the inside critic you can never get rid of.”

But for a leader, she continued, fearlessness often means focusing more on your inner voice. Huffington vehemently denounced political polls and their spawn of politicians “wanting to go along with everyone and not offending anyone.” Before her speech, when asked whom she supports for the 2008 presidency, Huffington said that the Huffington Post was not endorsing anyone. She did, however, express concern over Hillary Clinton’s “equivocation,” a quality she attributes to many politicians under the influence of polls.

Huffington’s audience included Yale students, alumnae, professors, and community members, many of whom stayed at the law school to participate in leadership panels throughout the day. The Women’s Leadership Initiative, an undergraduate Yale program founded last year, recruited various female alums to run panels on everything from “Debates Over Education: What’s the Best Way to Educate American Women?” to “Under-Representation of Women in U.S. Politics” to “How to Get Published,” which included the Independent’s own Melissa Bailey as a panelist.

Catherine Cheney (pictured with Huffington), a Yale sophomore and chair of the conference, radiated professional excitement while waiting for Huffington, who was 30 minutes late after taping “The Today Show.” As an organization, Cheney said, the Women’s Leadership Initiative “has developed its mission and its goals and now I feel that it’s pretty established and its goals are pretty clear.”

The group’s mission, which can be read on its website, “aims to create a campus culture that empowers aspiring female leaders at Yale.” One of the ways it goes about this is “by presenting speakers who may serve as role models for our members.” To state my version of the truth, Arianna Huffington, fearless, outspoken journalist and mother of two, is a killer role model for women at Yale and beyond.