Arianna Huffington doesn't quite deny the possibility she'll sell the Huffington Post in a story for tomorrow's Times, saying only that she hasn't discussed a sale. One source told the Times that HuffPo executives investigated possible sale prices and figured the site is worth around $200 million, or $50 for each visitor. In the meantime, HuffPo is going to help put your local newspaper out of business — and probably undermine in its own value — by metroblogging:

In October, the site hired a new chief executive, Betsy Morgan, from CBS Interactive, and this summer the site will take an ambitious step by introducing its version of a metropolitan section: local versions for major cities.

Whether readers will follow the site into new areas, however, is an open — and expensive — question. The plan will put The Huffington Post into competition with existing newspapers and, arguably, with companies like Yahoo, AOL and CNN.com.

...said Micah L. Sifry, the editor of the blog TechPresident.com: "Will people go to The Huffington Post for great sports blogging? They’re certainly not going to go see what Arianna says about opening day."

Depending on specifics, HuffPo's local expansion could put the site into competition with local blog networks like Gothamist and Curbed.

A HuffPo with huge traffic, a small staff and lots of free celebrity content is probably worth some serious coin. A HuffPo entangled in the lower-margin business of local news is going to be valued more like one of those sad newspapers Arianna is supposedly helping to destroy.

[Times]

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