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AOL Picking Up Journalists Shed By Conventional Media

Posted by timothy on from the save-us-aol-kenobi-you're-our-only-hope dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "David Weir writes on Bnet that the thousands of journalists being let go from newspapers, magazines, and television networks have increasingly been showing up on AOL's payroll — over 1,500 in the last eighteen months — a number AOL expects to double or even triple over the coming year. 'Over time, talent is a fixed cost,' says Marty Moe, Senior Vice-President of AOL Media. 'You can syndicate it, distribute it as you scale. Furthermore, we are already the largest branded content company in the US, with an audience of 75 million domestic uniques. At our size, we can leverage the cost of our publishing and content management systems along with the talent and make the whole thing do-able on an advertising model.' Weir writes that AOL's turnaround started three years ago via the acquisition of Weblogs, Inc., and its set of branded verticals, including Engadget in technology, Autoblog covering the auto industry, and Joystiq covering gaming."

18 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. "Branded verticals"? by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You could've just said "niche blogs". What makes them "branded" verticals, anyway? It's not like "Autoblog" is one of the news industry's most sought-after trademark endorsements.

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    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    1. Re:"Branded verticals"? by Rogerborg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Engadget and Joystiq are linked here multiple times per day, so they must be doing something right.

      Paying in small unmarked bills?

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      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    2. Re:"Branded verticals"? by sys.stdout.write · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was about to reply to this story something to the effect of "AOL is still in existence? Who still uses it, who are its customers?!". And then I read your e-mail address.

  2. Re:first by PDoc · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wish I was you. Really.

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    Give a man a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)
  3. "Talent is a fixed cost"...says it all by Dr_Ken · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They don't call those guys "human resources" for nothing! People (i.e., "the talent") are a resource to be acquired, used up and disposed of as cheaply and as profitably as possible. This story fits right in as a bookend to yesterday's story about how the Rupert Murdoch media empire is gonna start charging for all their websites because "content isn't free". Hmmm....

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    "If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
    1. Re:"Talent is a fixed cost"...says it all by TheVelvetFlamebait · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Bastards! How dare they trade in consensual labour!

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      You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
  4. I am going to kill myself by oenone.ablaze · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...now that I found out that I'm still patronizing AOL in some form. Yes, I used to have AOL. For shame.

    1. Re:I am going to kill myself by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Geek fail. AOL bought Netscape which became Mozilla which of course gave (emphasis on gave) us Firefox, so AOL can be consider worthy of Geek redemption, maybe ;). It certainly looks like the old world media types are really struggling leaving an opening for new world media types to gain market share.

      Interesting side point, the old world media types will be more likely to let the journalists that don't toe the corporate line and a more likely to report the news rather than just make advertising look like the news. Net result over time the old world media types will get caught out fabricating the news more and more often by reporters who now work for competitors and who know all the old world media dirty trade secrets.

      The internet news channels will be working hard to build a reputation for honestly and accuracy, so as to gain as much market share as possible as news shifts from TV (the idiot box, have to laugh), to streaming content on a computer.

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      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  5. Somebody needs to pay these guys by pzs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There have been several stories on Slashdot recently about the demise of newspapers. Commentary from blogs and elsewhere is fine, but somebody needs to be gathering the primary data. If AOL are willing to pick up the slack on this, I might just start to forgive them for all those damn floppy disks in the late 90s.

    They talk about paying for it with syndication and distribution; I wonder if this model can be used to pay for proper long-term investigative journalism, the kind of stuff that is vital to democracy.

    1. Re:Somebody needs to pay these guys by pzs · · Score: 4, Funny

      My dad tried to make Christmas decorations out of the CDs. They looked hideous and cutting them out made really jagged edges that were pretty dangerous.

      I guess I could have used them like ninja throwing stars to slay the call-centre staff. "Yes, I want to cancel my fucking account!"

    2. Re:Somebody needs to pay these guys by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's funny how other industries dying during a recession is perfectly normal, but for newspapers it's TEH END.

      They've still got a good 10 years of churning out pulp before the real DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS kicks in.

      /Works for a newspaper corporation.

      //Back in the black this fiscal quarter for the first time in 18 months.

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      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  6. Re:It's time! by oodaloop · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wait, all I need is Synergy and Put This One To Bed and I'll win!

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    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  7. Will the public demand news? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So far, they mostly demand entertainment.

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    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  8. The Big Media-of-Media Shift by chazd1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think this is pretty big news.

    It seems just like when Virgin Atlanic airlines took advantage of complacent and poorly managed (at the top) Pan Am Airlines and cherry picted talent. Look who is around now. I think we may finally be seeing the shift in media from print to web for newspapers. It is a big ship and it takes time. Industries reinvent themselves, sometimes as other companies.

    1. Re:The Big Media-of-Media Shift by demachina · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For AOL to really turn around they need to rebrand their company. That AOL brand is completely toxic to most people due to:

      - overdone saturation CD marketing campaigns that made that brand perennial joke fodder
      - a reputation as the walled Internet of the clueless
      - AOL nearly single handedly destroying Time Warner (though maybe that wouldn't have been a bad thing) which associates their brand with catastrophic failure
      - there is something about Steve Case that just gives me the willies. He strikes me as the ultimate PHB.

      I suspect a lot of people wouldn't go to an AOL portal just because its got AOL on it no matter how good the content.

      I will give AOL kudos for trying to save journalism when it seems no one else will. Someone needs to save journalism while separating it from dead tree newspaper because that business model needs to die. There simply isn't a rationale for a distribution model that kills millions of trees every year nor for burning the fuel hauling them all over the place.

      I still read the New York Times online though I doubt that will continue when the return to the subscription model. I also have a nagging remembrance of how badly they failed when they let Judith Miller run her pro Iraq war propaganda campaign under their letterhead. In general old media completely failed us from about 9/11/01 up until they finally stopped being complete propaganda tools for the Bush administration around the time of Katrina. I'd seriously like to see some good journalists work over the Obama administration and Congress too for their continued pandering to big business. I'm hoping Danial Froomkin will pick up the cause when he starts work at Huffinton Post.

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      @de_machina
  9. Turnaround my ass... by ivan256 · · Score: 3, Informative

    AOL's acquisition of these well-trafficked "blogs" was a turnaround alright. It was a turnaround for the blogs. They all started to suck.

    It's almost guaranteed that if you see the AOL logo at the bottom of a blog, it's going to be a maze of links you think head off to references, stories, and other places of interest, but instead link back to other pages on the blog itself. Imagine slashdot if the link to TFA was just a link back to the dupe from three days ago, and you've got every AOL blog out there.

    It's a shame, 'cause some of them were pretty good before the takeover.

  10. BINGO! by Hurricane78 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I just won the web economy bullshit bingo! What I will do with the money I won?

    Syndicate with talented fixed-cost do-able domestic model uniques, to leverage and scale my verticals, until acquisition for branding, and then reach the turnaround, of course!

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    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  11. If they are smart by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They will push to have at least one top reporter in each city in which a second or even third newspaper shut down. For example, I am here in Colorado. Rocky Mountain News closed earlier due to the bad management that was occurring. Basically, it ran the paper into the ground esp. with their handling of the internet (ugly step child). OTH, AOL has far far more of an idea of how to handle the internet. They could easily hire one or more of the RMN top reporters and re-start it. At this time, the main paper that remains, the Denver Post, is HORRIBLY ran. It has an online editor, Demetria Gallegos, who came from TV. Dgallegos gets on-line and will delete posts or ban anybody that disagrees with her personal POV. It is unlikely that DP will get their act together because all of their top ppl view the net as an enemy, not the future.

    AOL, you can help speed things up. NewsPapers need to die.

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    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.