Arianna Huffington stepping down as Huffington Post editor-in-chief

Arianna Huffington, who helped found The Huffington Post in 2005, is stepping down as editor-in-chief of the publication.

In a note to employees Thursday, Huffington said that she would be focusing on her new venture, a health-and-wellness startup called Thrive Global.

“I fully expected to be able to continue leading HuffPost while also building Thrive Global,” Huffington wrote. “But it became clear that this was an illusion as Thrive went from an idea to a reality, with investors, staff and offices.”

She added: “One of the Thrive principles is knowing when it’s time for a new chapter to begin, and for me that time has arrived.”

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Huffington signed a new four-year contract in June 2015 to stay on as chairwoman, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. The contract allayed concerns that she would leave the company after Verizon’s $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL, The Huffington Post’s parent company.

Last month, Verizon announced that it was acquiring Yahoo’s internet business, raising questions about how Yahoo’s news business and The Huffington Post would work together.

In her note, Huffington, 66, said her contract included a clause that allowed her to start a new venture. She had intended to remain at The Huffington Post but realized that was not possible.

“This has been a very difficult decision, but in many ways an inevitable one, given my commitment to building Thrive into a company that has a global impact on how we work and live,” she wrote.

Since The Huffington Post was founded 11 years ago, it has become one of the biggest online media organizations. In 2011, the publication was acquired by AOL for $315 million, a hefty price tag that signaled the rise of digital media.

“Arianna is a visionary who built The Huffington Post into a truly transformative news platform,” Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, said in a statement. “Today, The Huffington Post is a firmly established and celebrated news source, and AOL and Verizon are committed to continuing its growth and the groundbreaking work Arianna pioneered.”

The publication won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 and has expanded globally in the last several years.

It has a robust staff that writes original articles, but it is also known for aggressive aggregation, a practice that has at times caused tension in the media industry.

Huffington has become a powerful force in her own right. She has published several books on health and wellness, including “Thrive” and “The Sleep Revolution,” and she has become a champion of a good night’s sleep.

But her outside interests have also raised questions about her commitment to her publication and whether she was using it to promote her interests.

She joined the board of Uber in April, for instance, a move that caused a stir among newsroom employees, though she said she would recuse herself from coverage of the company.

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