

Paul Miller Leaves Engadget/AOL - Cites AOL Way Issues - moses1400
http://pauljmiller.com/?p=5

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satoimo
I wonder if gdgt.com will have something to announce soon.

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ojbyrne
AOL seems like a flaming jet plane rapidly heading towards the ground. They
keep thinking that you can use cash to create a parachute, but it seems not to
work.

Good for potential acquisitions though!

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petercooper
Someone recently did the math on the "economics" of The Huffington Post (a
recent AOL acquisition):
[http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the-
econ...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the-economics-of-
blogging-and-the-huffington-post/)

An average of $13 of revenue per post doesn't exactly fill one with optimism.
If they were paying the going rate for writers, they'd be making a loss..

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kenjackson
See this page: <http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way#-18>

The cost of a _premium_ article is $250? The writers must get paid a lot less
than I imagine.

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petercooper
$9 eCPM (per ad, not even per page)? If they can seriously get that for run of
the mill non-niche content, that's where their real skill lies. There are
plenty of part-time bloggers (including many HN users) who could make a
serious chunk of change earning $9 eCPM even on their personal blogs..

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callumjones
I'm more upset by the fact that he wont be on the Engadget Podcast. Those 3
make up probably some of the best dynamics for podcasts.

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kenjackson
Unquestionable. Great chemistry. They should consider bringing Joanna fulltime
for Paul.

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kylec
Eh, Joanna's a good writer but she's not really that good on the podcast. I'd
prefer Myriam Joire (tnkgrl) instead - she's very entertaining on the Mobile
podcast and would make a good compliment to Josh and Nilay.

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sp332
_unfortunately Engadget is owned by AOL, and AOL has proved an unwilling
partner in this site’s evolution.... AOL has its heart in the wrong place with
content.... AOL sees content as a commodity it can sell ads against. That ...
doesn’t promote good journalism or even good entertainment, and it doesn’t
allow an ambitious team like the one I know and love at Engadget to thrive._

This reminds me strongly of this old, but still very relevant post which
explains why textfiles.com doesn't have advertising:
<http://www.textfiles.com/thoughts/advertising.html>

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hamrickdavid
This is very disappointing. Paul is a great writer and a great voice on the
engadget podcast.

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SolarUpNote
I'm still angry at AOL from 10 years ago, when they kept stealing money out of
my bank account - after I had cancelled my subscription.

Why are they getting in to journalism? Did the government finally outlaw AOL's
previous business model or what?

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mkr-hn
They're trying to ride the SEO wave before search engines become self-aware
and make slaves out of humanity.

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benologist
So basically they're just a real-time Demand Media.

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recoiledsnake
Ugh. This looks painful <http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way#-16>

No wonder he quit. Any self-respecting writer wouldn't want to stay on.

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petercooper
Most full-time, high volume writers or journalists are used to this - it's not
a question of self respect any more than questioning the self respect of
someone who works in WalMart. You can still take pride in (and enjoy) your
work even if it's under someone else's direction.

On a much smaller scale, I, a small-time 'problogger', do the same. Monitoring
trends, tracking things I know will be coming up.. For example, it's in my
calendar that next Thursday it'll be 18 years since Matz started to develop
Ruby - you can be sure I'll be writing about it ;-)

~~~
fjw
Sure, it certainly helps to pay attention to trends and write on what people
care about, but when your entire operation is centered around writing articles
with the sole intention of attracting page views, you know there's something
wrong. While I agree that you can take pride in your work even under someone
else's direction, AOL's plan seems to involve mindless "slave-driven" writing
- something I'm sure Paul is sick of and that I would be sick of as well.

