HuffPost announced Thursday that it is taking a tour “to understand what’s on the minds of Americans and what it means to be American in 2017,” but the publication will visit mostly cities that voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Lydia Polgreen, HuffPost’s editor-in-chief, notes in the announcement that while “political divisions between us seem starker than ever,” the tour aims to show similarities between Americans. The publication will visit 14 cities in counties which voted to elect Clinton and 9 cities in counties which voted to elect President Donald Trump, though Trump won the vast majority of the states.
Polgreen told Politico that the media enterprise is not visiting “Trump country” and cited factors like a compelling college system or huge Arab American population to justify visiting certain locations on the list.
HuffPost, then called The Huffington Post, attached an editor’s note to articles pertaining to Trump throughout the election cycle, terming the future president a “racist” and “misogynist”:
“Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.”
The outlet removed the note after Trump won the election, insisting it was “start[ing] with a clean slate.”
“We were basically looking at a pretty eclectic mix of communities that represent a lot of different facets of American life, said Polgreen in an interview with Politico. “All of these ideological divisions [in the media] are confusing right now and for me it’s less about left or right — it’s who are you more oriented toward, more oriented to the interest of the wealthy and powerful or are you orientated toward the people who are not in the top 20 percent.”
Two sources told Politico that the tour cost may approach $1 million, but while HuffPost recently went through nearly 40 layoffs, Polgreen said that the investment did not preclude the outlet from seeking new talent.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to HuffPost for comment, but received none in time for publication.
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