The Huffington Post Chicago, the first local spin-off of Arianna Huffington's ubiquitous site, launched today. according to the boss, it "is part local news source, part resource guide, and part virtual soap box." Sounds like good fun for those living the Windy City.

So who broke the news? Oh right, we did in a May interview with Huffington:

If we want to add more verticals faster, you know, we're launching local. We're launching in Chicago. If we decide to add more cities then we will raise more capital faster.

Why did you pick Chicago?
We picked Chicago because we didn't want to pick New York and LA 'cause it seemed too big, and both my partner and I have a lot of good friends in Chicago. It would be basically the same principle as The Huffington Post, it would just be based on local news and local blogs and people could go to The Huffington Post proper for their national news.

Is there a team based in Chicago?
You know, we don't really need a team. It's just one person who will be aggregating blogs and news [former Chicago Sun-Times staffer Ben Goldberger], and then as we learned at Huffington Post, everybody will be feeding the new baby.

Anyone know where the next city will be? Email us.