Verizon hears about potential buyers for the HuffPost website, in the final phase of the US telecommunications group's retreat from the digital media industry.

In recent weeks, Verizon has raised a HuffPost sale with potential buyers, according to two people familiar with the discussions. No formal sales process has been initiated and the talks are at an early stage. A company spokesman declined to comment.

The attempt to sell the progressive news site is a sign of how Verizon is continuing to slim down the family of dotcom businesses, which it amassed with the costly acquisition of Yahoo and AOL, assets it wrote down by nearly $ 5 billion earlier this year. Last month, Verizon sold Tumblr for a reported "nominal" amount, after buying the social network for $ 1

.1 billion in 2013.

Verizon formed its media division from the merger of AOL, which Verizon bought for $ 4.4 billion in 2015, and Yahoo, which it paid $ 4.5 billion in 2017. At the time, Tim Armstrong, the former chief of AOL who was the pioneer of the digital strategy, said that joining would create "the best consumer media company."

Since the time of the agreement, groups of digital media once paid tribute as the future of the news business has struggled to meet the soaring expectations of the sector, especially as online advertising revenues have been swallowed up by Google and Facebook.

Some companies like Rookie have closed while newsrooms on HuffPost, BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox have been exposed to positions. Consolidation has swept the sector when financially tense digital media groups seek scope. In just the past month, Vice Media bought Refinery29, the women-focused millennial site, while Group Nine bought PopSugar and Vox bought New York Media, the owner of the namesake magazine.

The Huffington Post, a liberal news site founded in 2005 by a group of publishers including Arianna Huffington, was purchased by AOL for $ 315 million in 2011. It operates in more than a dozen countries through licensing agreements.

In January, Verizon announced that it would reduce staff numbers on its digital media division by about 7 percent, cutting around 800 jobs, including some on HuffPost. The news site also closed its German arm, HuffPost Deutschland, in March.