Liberal-focused The Huffington Post and social network Facebook.com have partnered on a new website called the HuffPost Social News.  HuffPost Social News aggregates Huffington Post news stories that are being discussed through Facebook.

These stories include links on The Huffington Post that is being commented on in Facebook.  Stories that are shared by users are also mentioned on the HuffPost Social News website. This concept is similar to TimesPeople, a social network that The New York Times launched last year.

“Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news–both the stories they love and the stories they hate–with friends,” stated Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau. “It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends.”

Over the weekend, The Huffington Post (HuffPo) reported that they will be hiring a group of investigative journalists to report about the economy exclusively.  HuffPo is working with The Atlantic Philanthropies and several other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with a budget of about $1.75 million.

That is enough for Huffington to hire about 10 staff journalists to focus on the economy.  The work provided by these journalists will also be available for any publication that wants to syndicate it.  “All of us increasingly have to look at different ways to save investigative journalism,” stated Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the website.

Even though HuffPo skews to be more liberal, they said that the newly formed economy-focused aspect of the website will be nonpartisan.

[via AP]