This post is a designed meditation on publications that are strictly digital, and their future under the new reality of agglomeration through acquisition.
Yes, the great landscape of blogs and digital media is a-changin,’ and there is no more conspicuous face in the matter than AOL. AOL, a hulking relic in the very definition of the phrase, coming back from the dial-up grave, is on the warpath with a checkbook. It is, quite literally, redrawing the map of online content.
This is not the moment in which digital publications have ‘come of age,’ or any such nonsense, but it might mark the instant in which a media empire can be built with purely online elements. AOL is trying to do just that.
While that might seem almost laudable, there are cracks in the armor. Two trends outline changes in content under an AOL led future that might not be as wholesome as the company wishes to appear: the AOL way, and recent, seemingly new, standards for contributions to the Huffington Post following its purchase by AOL.
The Huffington Post: Clearinghouse of the Internet
The Huffington Post’s tagline, ‘The Internet Newspaper,’ was more fitting than most of its readers probably knew. It wasn’t just a newspaper for the Internet, it was one done in the style of the Internet. With thousands of contributors from every walk of life blogging away, it had a feel of barely controlled chaos, something that helped to foster its vibrant community of reader commenting.
As the Huffington Post grew, it took on a status all of its own; it still holds to this day the number one influence rating of all blogs as denoted by Technorati. To contribute to the Huffington Post became a mark of having ‘made it’ in one topic or another. And as the publication added new sections, including city specific pages, a Religion forum, and soon, Canadian and UK editions, more and more writers became interested in adding to its pages.
After all, the Huffington Post had what everyone who writes wants, and it’s not money, it offered access to an audience. And so on it went, with new topics, writers, growth, and increasing revenues, until all of that was turned upside down in one fell swoop.
AOL buys the farm
AOL turned out its pockets, found some $315 million to spare, and cut a deal. Rumors have HuffPo founder Arianna’s share at around $100 million of that total.
Of course AOL’s homepage remains massive, holding onto the 17th spot on the most trafficked US site list, 16 slots higher than the Huffington Post today. But if you examine those charts, one is going down while the other is rising. AOL bought the upward graph.
When any publication is purchased, especially one in which the founder is still on board, people fret about the effects of the takeover; will the character remain the same? Will the new owners beat the life out of it? Will its best and brightest leave and find new homes if the new corporate environment is stifling?
The list goes on, and in the case of AOL there is precedent to ground such worries: the AOL Way. The AOL Way, in case you missed the controversy, is AOL’s plan for the future of its publications, including its purchases, not just the ones that it has grown.
The AOL Way is a method of streamlining and SEOing content to make it, borrowing from Daft Punk, “harder, faster, better, stronger.” But what it does not do is bolster author autonomy, or anything along that line; it is a method designed to extract money from content, not to build great publications.
When the AOL Way leaked in full the media, our own Courtney Boyd Myers asked the question that was on everyone’s mind: “Is AOL destroying journalism for page views?” While that headline is a touch loud, and what headline is not, she is pushing a real point: is AOL going to use their Way to turn down the levels of personality and quirk at the publications that it owns and will buy in the future?
This question is why I called this article “Content control in the Age of AOL,” and took the time to write it. AOL has not just purchased the Huffington Post, but other, quite dear publications, that have long had reputations for the individuality of their authors. And we worry about them.
But in the case of the Huffington Post, are we seeing any changes thus far that might be cause for alarm for fans of the publication’s past form as an independent publication?
