

Profile of The Awl - sergeant3
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/9/8908279/the-awl-profile-choire-sicha-john-herrman-matt-buchanan?

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slackstation
I read this article a while back couldn't finish it. It just seems the
writers' of The Verge's main point is that The Awl is great because it's read
by the most important people in media like ourselves.

The Verge is the same tech reporting that I can find elsewhere with better
graphic design and an editorial style that trys to look a bit further than 5
inches past their nose.

In other words, The Verge has a low hurdle to jump over to be better than most
tech writing. They are far from the best. Their coverage isn't very deep and
their technologists aren't very insightful nor very good at predicting what's
next. I find Ars Technica and Anandtech to be far better technically while not
being nearly so smug and self-important as the Verge. Their greatest
contribution so far has been their 10 minute wrapup of "All the things you
need to know about tech conference X". That is merely the blog post of the
youtube generation. Not insignificant but, nothing really groundbreaking nor
the best of their industry.

While I haven't read nearly as much of the Awl, I have stumbled upon a few of
their articles over the years and nothing has struck me as profoundly better
than the rest. Just filled with the thought that they are.

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serve_yay
I have enjoyed the Awl pretty much since its inception, they run a lot of good
writing. The ambivalence Sicha and the editors exhibit here about the future
and everything else is irksome, though. It's like, figure out what the hell
you want to do already. Six years! Oh my goodness! Yes, time passes. Please
try not to faint.

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dustym
Upvoted. Try working with them.

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jetskindo
The Awl looks like a blog to me, not sure what they are talking about.

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pavlov
Then clearly you're not part of the distinguished group known as "the most
important people in media", because The Verge is asking us:

 _Why are the most important people in media reading The Awl?_

Seems like there's clear market demand for a blog called _The The_ , where
self-aggrandizing bloggers write about their similarly immodest blogger
friends.

~~~
dustym
Man... if there was clear market demand for immodesty we at _The Awl_ would be
billionaires by now.

One can dream.

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shopinterest
I love the Awl, Splitsider, Billfold et al... But the Media Apocalypse is no
Joke - The Dissolve is gone - and ViralNova is acquired for $100MM - WTF? It
seems content for brainy, niche audiences will not survive due to low scale.
Unfortunately the web is finding the lowest common denominators for content
consumption, and it certainly seems that those who deliver it best will
survive. With 3MM uniques it seems to small to matter. Hope it does become the
surviving cockroach...but it doesnt look good. Just hope the web stops
becoming 'Idiocracy' for clicks.

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slackstation
The fold of The Dissolve has nothing to do with the acquisition of ViralNova
other than one could make money and the other could not. It's nothing more
than one selling brocolli on the street corner and one selling candy.
ViralNova makes cheap, fast, sticky content that no one really cares about.
The Dissolve made content that not enough people cared about. The real
competitor to The Dissolve is the amateur. All over the web, there are dozens
if not hundreds of opinions about popular culture made by amateurs for their
own enjoyment and distributed for free. The Dissolve and places like it cannot
convince enough people to just give their time and attention because the
product that they produce, their opinions on popular culture aren't proving to
be so different of such a better quality than the rest of the internet
combined. A quick google search for any topic and especially a popular one
will return litterally millions of options to choose from. That's what the
Dissolve is competing with, not ViralNova or The New York Times or The New
Yorker but, all of them and the army of amateurs giving their opinions for
free to anyone who will listen. The Dissolve is not better than that to enough
people that they could get advertising to support themselves. Pointing to
ViralNova as a reason is smoke-screen; a cynical and myopic answer to a
complex question. It's never been better to be a consumer, to be a reader of
popular culture despite the loudly bemoaned death of large media outlets. Now,
there are problems with long form journalism and it's impact on democracy but,
opinions on movies, video games, music and all popular culture are flourishing
despite the death of places like The Dissolve.

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shopinterest
Based on this, then everyone is an expert now, all you need is an opinion and
an URL. So a random 19 year old's opinion is as valuable as an expert?
Practically, of course not, but your arguments is that online, it doesn't
matter. Expert and non-expert are the same. If that is the case, then its not
cynical to say lowbrow content (even fake content, e.g. Clickhole) will beat
quality content in the long run. I would rather get my Movie review notes from
knowledgeable people than from a random responder at Yahoo Answers or a random
YouTube video grapher ranting about Avengers and Female Ghostbusters, but if
you really believe amateur content beats anything else, and the primary
survival metrics are advertising dollars and scale, then nothing will survive
because nothing would scale. In the scenario you describe, what content
scales? Whatever ends at FB?

