Is Huffington Post Reinventing the Liveblog?

Via Simon Owens at Nieman Journalism Lab:

A few days ago, I clicked on a link to an Associated Press article published at the Huffington Post and reporting on a new AP poll that found widespread support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like hundreds of other news outlets, HuffPo subscribes to the AP and runs its articles to supplement the original content the AOL-owned company produces on its own.

A curious thing happened when I finished the article, however: I didn’t stop reading.

At the bottom of the piece, I came across a liveblog that published up-to-the minute news on the protests. The posts were a mixture of links, block quotes, reprinted tweets, and even small original news nuggets being reported by HuffPo journalists on the ground. All together, I probably spent an extra 20 minutes on the site than I would have otherwise. I began clicking around and found that HuffPo had embedded this same liveblog at the bottom of nearly every article concerning Occupy Wall Street.

Read through for the nuts and bolts of what HuffPo is doing, why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it.

Interesting is Nico Pitney, Executive Editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, observing how they identified three types of readers — the news browsers who just want the article overview, the junkies who want the immediate (liveblog) update, and the newsies who want both — and how they’re trying to satisfy each.