"We are making money occasionally," Huffington said. "But we are not profitable in a sustained way yet. We have good months where we make money. We've just built our advertising team, so occasional profitability is about to become sustainable profitability."

Huffington declined to be specific about the finances of the company, which is private. "We're generating substantial revenue, but we have a lot of expenses" was about as detailed as she would get.

Although Huffington declined to discuss specific financial results, Fortune recently quoted an unnamed source estimating that the site is on pace to increase its annual revenue from $4 million this year to $7.5 million next year. (The same article quoted her as saying she prays an hour a day, an assertion she now says is mistaken.)

Company officials dismissed recent speculation about whether Huffington and other founders intend to cash out: There are no plans to either sell the company or take it public. "We're focusing on trying to build the business," a spokesperson said.

Morgan said she was "very pleased" with how the site has grown. It is the second most popular political website, after the conservative bulletin board Free Republic, according to Hitwise. "The trajectory is very solid," she said.

As traffic has grown, so has scrutiny. Some critics dismiss it as shallow. Others have attacked Huffington Post for what they perceive as a liberal bias, favoring stories that tend to be critical of conservatives, Republicans, and especially President Bush and the war in Iraq.

The issue is particularly important because Huffington Post is in the process of ramping up its original reporting. How can it claim to be an objective purveyor of news when it has been so critical of the current administration?

"That really is a very important question," Huffington said, "because your assumption is completely wrong. The editorial stance of the Huffington Post is to debunk the right-left way of thinking, which has become completely obsolete."

Referring to the defunct CNN talk show that popularized left-right screamfests, she said, "Crossfire the show has ended, but the Crossfire way of doing things has not."

She discounted the value of giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. "If you look at everything that way," she said, "you tend to give equal value to some pretty schlocky positions that have no foundation in truth."

Morgan, the C.E.O., described the Huffington Post approach as "covering the news in a 21st-century kind of way." In addition to new ideas about balance and fairness, that approach includes a new business model too.

In recent months, as it has become clear that the Huffington Post has the potential to make real money, some pundits have questioned whether it is fair that the site does not pay its bloggers.

In the same way she handles criticism of her website's politics, Huffington rejects the way the pay discussion has been framed.

"They're not 'our' bloggers," she said. "They blog because they want to.

"There is something about the internet that makes people want to engage, to have their views out there," she continued. "Think about the bloggers as op-ed page writers. No one writes an op-ed for the New York Times for the money. They're writing because they want their views out there.