AOL Picking Up Journalists Shed By Conventional Media

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."

Somebody needs to pay these guys

[pzs]

There have been several [slashdot.org] stories [slashdot.org] 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 [wikipedia.org].

Will the public demand news?

[drinkypoo]

So far, they mostly demand entertainment.

Re:"Branded verticals"?

[Rogerborg]

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

Paying in small unmarked bills?

Re:"Branded verticals"?

[sys.stdout.write]

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.

Re:"Branded verticals"?

[deanstevenson]

Do you read much about cars? Turns out that Autoblog is definitely an improving brand amongst auto enthusiasts. Autoblog is one of the most quoted and referenced websites on the numerous (and growing) car forums on the net. This challenges the traditional vehicles of auto journalism such as MotorTrend, Car and Driver, and Road&Track. To claim a niche blog is not a brand ignores the very site you posted the claim on.

Re:"Talent is a fixed cost"...says it all

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Bastards! How dare they trade in consensual labour!

Re:"Talent is a fixed cost"...says it all

[fast turtle]

Thank god you're not a bookkeeper or CPA because the definition of a fixed cost is anything that does not vary in cost for at least (1) one accounting year. This means that Payroll can be a fixed cost because you already have a budget for that if you're large enough. In the case of AOL/IBM or any other large company like them, payroll is pretty much a fixed cost as they already know how much they're going to spend on it over each year's period. It's also the reason that divisions have layoffs when the company is doing quite well - It's called a budget and yes it's a fixed cost.

• Even I, as a small business owner understand what in hell a fixed cost is unlike you

.

Re:"Branded verticals"?

[everynerd]

Now read his nickname and all the pieces will begin coming together.

If they are smart

[WindBourne]

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.

This could be the garden that AOL built.

[Anonymous Coward]

In a way AOL accomplishes what Murdoch and others wanted to accomplish. A walled-garden to which their news would be sold to. Now if AOL wants to do, to the general public, advertiser supported, and that works? Then great, otherwise AOL subscriber only is always there to fall back on.

There's also going to be the issue of journalistic integrity with all these corporations buying up talent.

Re:The Big Media-of-Media Shift

[demachina]

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.

Re:This could be the smartest thing they've done..

[schwaang]

Yeah, maybe they could call it pathfinder.com [wikipedia.org], and use Time Warner's ex-employees to eat TW's lunch for dumping them and AOL. Payback time baby!