Okay Geek Farm
AOL is killing journalism very fast - TechCrunch closing up shop, Engadget still falling apart
Brandon Davenport
As the owner of Okay Geek, it still baffles me today why a group of people who write about things they like (aka a blog) should ever be considered a “business”. Sure, we can have ads and make a bit of profit, and hell, maybe we can even make a living off of it! But, I mean, we all know that money (or lack there of) and greed are the poisons that eventually brings entire companies to their knees, and the process of a blog selling themselves to a large company is just a recipe for disaster.
We’ve seen it happen many times. These wonderful tech publications go from writing great content, to money machines so fast it’s scary. I mean, as the owner of a tech blog, it frightens me to know that there are people out there who don’t care about anything but the almighty dollar, and we’re the punks they use to get the green… that is until they suck us dry. Then they move on to the next blog.
MG Siegler wrote this on TechCrunch a few days ago
“TechCrunch is on the precipice. As soon as tomorrow, Mike may be thrown out of the company he founded. Or he may not. No one knows. And if he is, he will be replaced by — well, again, no one knows. No one knows much of anything. Certainly no one at TechCrunch. This site is about to change forever and we’re in the total fucking dark. I’ve been able to piece together little bits of information here and there, and it’s not looking good.”
And as you know, the Engadget staff had to do the same
Paul Miller — “I’d love to be able to keep doing this forever, but unfortunately Engadget is owned by AOL, and AOL has proved an unwilling partner in this site’s evolution. It doesn’t take a veteran of the publishing world to realize that AOL has its heart in the wrong place with content. As detailed in the “AOL Way,” and borne out in personal experience, AOL sees content as a commodity it can sell ads against. That might make good business sense (though I doubt it), but it 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.”
So, you probably understand by now that AOL is not a good thing for online publishing. I’m writing this because I am frightened of companies like AOL who don’t give a flying fuck about the state of online publishing, and don’t see any redeeming qualities in the internet, other than being a goldmine of ripe, indipendant companies and businesses. They want to buy these businesses and fine tune them to be profit spewing power-houses, but once you take the soul out of a company, they have only so much to give until they burn out, and the people who matter jump ship.
This is heartless. The people who read these wonderful publications have been loyal for many years, and every day we look in dispair as our favorite websites and blogs get bought up by large companies and soon enough, we watch as they eventually spiral into the AOL cesspool of failure. AOL is where blogs and publications go to endure a quick and painful death, laced with riches and promise.
At Okay Geek, we write stuff. We don’t wear ties. AOL can suck it.
