Arianna Huffington: Ephron gave HuffPo "huge credibility"

(CBS News) Author and filmmaker Nora Ephron spent the last few years writing nearly 100 blog entries for the Huffington Post at the invitation of her longtime friend Arianna Huffington.

Tuesday on "CBS This Morning" Huffington said Ephron's writing gave credibility to The Huffington Post when the publication was in its infancy.

"She gave me courage to go on with it," Huffington said, "even a lot of my friends, people who loved me, said 'Don't do it. Why do you need this? It's not going to work. Most things on the internet don't work.' She said, 'Do it, I'm here for you.' And she blogged."

Ephron died of leukemia on Tuesday in New York at the age of 71.

Filmmaker Nora Ephron has passed away at 71
Read Huffington's remembrance of Ephron

Ephron who famously married and divorced Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein - who helped break the Watergate scandal - wrote her first blog in 2005 about former FBI official W. Mark Felt outing himself as the anonymous source Deep Throat.

(For a look back at Ephron's life and work, watch the video in the player below.)

"The day that Deep Throat announced himself...everybody wanted her to go on," Huffington said. "Everybody, everybody show, The New York Times, and she blogged for The Huffington Post, which was barely one month old. And that gave us huge credibility."

Ephron evangelized for The Huffington Post, Huffington said, even persuading iconic comedian and actor Steve Martin to write for the website. Ephron eventually became an editor-at-large for the site and campaigned Huffington for a specific section. Huffington explained, "One day I was staying with her on Long Island, and she said to me in the morning, 'You know, we need to launch a divorce section because marriage comes and goes, but divorce is forever. And we did, and she got involved every step of the way."

For more with Huffington discussing Ephron, watch the full "CBS This Morning" segment in the video above.