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Lydia Polgreen, now editor-in-chief for the Huffington Post, is seen in Manhattan in 2014. Polgreen, an experienced foreign correspondent, had been overseeing the Times’ global expansion project.DAMON WINTER/The New York Times

If Donald Trump's election last fall prompted a minor existential crisis among U.S. media, some outlets saw the moment as an opportunity: to reinvest in hard-hitting journalism, to redefine themselves and their relationship to their audiences. The Huffington Post was already in the midst of change, spurred by the recent departure of its founding editor and namesake, Arianna Huffington. In December, the global-news and blogging network scooped up Lydia Polgreen, a rising star at The New York Times, to be its new editor-in-chief. Right out of the gate, she said she wanted the site to "speak for and to people who feel left out."

Why did you leave the Times?

The election was really a road-to-Damascus moment for me, personally. And journalism at the moment is in a real crisis of trust: 18 per cent of Americans in the most recent Pew survey said they have a lot of trust in national media. It felt to me that HuffPost, with its really broad platform, that speaks in a very authentic voice to lots and lots of people, would be a great way to start a new conversation with an audience that is probably never going to read or subscribe to The New York Times but really needs a quality news source. Somebody that's looking out for them, that's thinking about their interests and the things that they care about.

When you talk about your goals for HuffPost, you sound almost Obamaesque, suggesting there is a vast unexplored common ground among Americans who live in, as it were, the United – not the Divided – States of America.

Look, all of us contain multitudes in our identity. I am a queer black woman. I am also the granddaughter of Goldwater Republicans. My father is a disabled vet. My mother is an immigrant. I went to a college in Maryland, where we study the great books – or as some people would like to pejoratively call it, the "dead white man canon" that is anathema to a lot of progressive folks.

You believe we're living in non-ideological times, but that flies in the face of surveys showing intensifying divisions between people who identify as Democrats or Republicans.

I think people have these tribal affiliations, so when you do a survey based on someone's political-party affiliation, you're going to get people who have strong feelings about belonging to one tribe or another. But I also don't think that necessarily represents the whole spectrum of the American public.

Why do you believe the divisions aren't as sharp as those surveys suggest?

The other day I was chatting with a Republican senator – I won't say the person's name because it was an off-the-record conversation – and we were marvelling at how many people, after the Obamacare repeal in the House, are saying, 'You know what? Screw it, we want single payer: Medicaid for all.' In Republican states. I think people have reached the state where they're asking really basic questions about what we owe one another as a society, and how we can all kind of get through these difficult times together.

A recent profile of you in Out, the LGBTQ magazine, quoted a friend saying, "There's nobody who looks like her in most newsrooms." Do you feel that as a weight? A privilege? A responsibility?

I try to wear it very lightly. I am very much a product of traditional newsrooms, and I think there's a part of me that's uncomfortable with people imputing things about my journalism based on my background. So that's something that, to be candid, I've struggled with a little bit. At the same time, it also seems clear that, just because of where I come from – whether it's my racial or ethnic background, whether it's my gender, my sexual orientation, whatever it is – for people who feel these kinds of big platforms aren't really open to them, don't really speak to them, aren't really sort of aimed at them, I can be an inspiration in some way.

Do you think it's likely that HuffPost will be able to go after the Breitbart audience?No! Look, I don't know who reads Breitbart. There are certain tent-pole principles that we just don't abide by: We have an inclusive idea of identity and belonging that is probably incompatible with what a lot of folks who read Breitbart feel. We need to think really carefully about how to reach out to new audiences while not alienating the people who already love us – which is, in a good month, 200 million people.

Last night's HuffPost front page featured three stories about Trump which, frankly, wouldn't seem out of place at your old outlet.

I think that the tone is different. I think that we're trying to tell stories in a way that grab people and have some sort of emotional content to them. Now, this is a work in progress, I've been here for four months, so I think that one doesn't turn a battleship around overnight. But – look, our audience wants to know about the biggest and most important things that are going on.

Okay, let's talk about what they want. At 8 o'clock last night, the 5 Trending Stories on HuffPost U.S. were: Dear Straight Men, Our Anus Doesn't Have a Sexual Orientation; Neighbourhood Full of Million-Dollar Homes is Now an Eerie Ghost Town; Can Americans Remove an 'Incompetent' President?; Bloodied Man Carrying Severed 'Human Head' Stabs Store Employee: Cops; and 50-Plus Women Can't Wear Bikinis? Not Anymore. Does that say anything about a disjuncture between the sort of work you're trying to do and the sort of work people are interested in?

Those all sound like fascinating stories and I read every single one.

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