You have created a business model that meets the needs of four constituencies: your contributors, your visitors, your advertisers and your investors. People have been trying for a decade now to do that with online ventures, and so many have failed.

People have said, "You have an interesting business model—you don’t pay your writers." [Laughs]

I know several publishers who would like to know how you get away with that.

What we found is that we provide our writers with a platform that gets their views out there in real time. We maintain that platform, we keep growing the number of people who come to the platform, and we get the content out. A lot of people link to us. People come to the site for many different reasons and in many different ways.

So the idea is: A) We want the regulars to be able to write about their interests. B) We want people who may not know about the Huffington Post to discover it because, for instance, a young actor like Ryan Reynolds has blogged, or Jamie Lee Curtis has blogged or Perez Hilton links to us. Suddenly we notice we get clicks from people who probably have never heard of us before, and they come to us because of someone or something that interests them on another site. They will come and discover the politics on HP, and we will have expanded to a new audience.

HP offered a forum and a home for a lot of left-leaning political types during what some of them call the "wilderness years" before the Democrats retook Congress in 2006. Will George W. Bush’s departure from office dampen the passions of the bloggers who have made your site successful?

I don’t think so. First of all, I think that one of the goals of HP is to help us move away from the right-left framing. I think it is obsolete, and it makes it harder for us to see what is really happening. If you take some of the biggest issues of our time, such as 70 percent of the people, Democrats and Republicans alike, want to bring the troops home from Iraq, that is not a left-wing position. Universal healthcare is also not a left-wing position. Mitt Romney, a Republican, brought it about in Massachusetts. Healthcare has become an issue with many corporations. That is why the framing of this is so important. That’s another kind of passion of mine: to look at issues with a fresh perspective instead of with these labels.

In the broader media landscape, what role will blogs play in 10 years?

There is a convergence taking place. Mainstream media are moving into blogs, some of them with a lot of success. The Washington Post has some great bloggers, as do the National Journal and the Atlantic Monthly. At the same time, blogs such as the Huffington Post are moving into original reporting. Josh Marshall’s blog, Talking Points Memo, broke the story on the U.S. attorney scandal. They used the "wisdom of the crowd" method: Somebody in Arizona noticed that a U.S. attorney was fired in Arizona, somebody else noticed in San Diego, and they connected the dots.

Some say that with HP you are laying the groundwork for a media empire. Will you eventually bring your two daughters into the family business?

I don’t think of it that way. My daughters are very interested in the Huffington Post. One of them worked as a comment moderator. They love to go to our offices in New York, because, first of all, everyone there is closer to their age than to mine. That is such a great place for teenagers interested in politics. While my daughters do love it, ultimately what they want to do with their lives is much their own decision. They have to finish high school and college first. The thing that I want for my children is for them to find their passion, whatever that is.

In 100 years, will Rupert Mur doch’s heirs be offering top dollar to your heirs to buy controlling interest in a Huffington media conglomerate?

[Laughs] I don’t have five-year plans, much less life plans. The great thing about life is that the best things that happen are not planned at all.Right now, I love what I’m doing, and I’m putting all my energy into it. I could spend 12 hours a day just working on the site, editing new content, bringing in new contributors. I feel that anywhere we want to go, we can do it there.