I was also at AOL in the early Weblogs, Inc. days. While we didn't look at ourselves as content farmers the same way you'd look at demand media, I definitely think the $4/post model has it's benefits. For me, it was an incentive to go through a large body of work fairly quickly. Thanks to my work at Engadget too, I was able to get a crash course in technology journalism from the master (Peter Rojas).
I often think of Weblogs, Inc. as a sort of freak of startup nature. Very little funding, but the company had a huge impact, especially on its acquirer. AOL's core publishing technology platform is Blogsmith, Weblogs, Inc.'s home grown CMS, not to mention how Engadget, Autoblog and other influential Weblogs, Inc. blogs have given other AOLers insight into what good content looks like.
As Marshall mentions in the post, I'm wondering where the new minor leagues are. I'd guess just being a regular contributor to Hacker News might be as close as there is right now.
It was the pile em up and sell em cheap model that burnt me out in the end. I genuinely spent a lot of time early on writing quality posts, getting breaking news (because I was in the UK and so awake earlier) and doing in depth analysis type articles. Then I got fed up of the pressure to constantly keep churning stuff out, and one day I looked at the crap I was writing and quit. There were tricks you could do to pump up your post quota - I remember starting WoW.com's Breakfast Topic as one such vehicle, though it was also an interesting conversation starter.
Still, I am very glad I did it. I learnt a lot about the gaming and tech industries and got a start in journalism as a result. Which I moved away from, but that was my choice.
Again this drives home a solid point that even if you're doing mechanical-turk-esque labor, if you strive to be the best in your field you'll get noticed. Content farms are, as he said, the minor leagues for a bigger tech writing gig.
Either way your probably going to need a body of solid past work at the volume that the bigger players are after if you want to work there. I guess you can either go this route and make some small time money, or try and build your own blog following.
Of course there will be outliers who get into the good blogging jobs easier, but as he says they expect 5 quality posts a day at RRW, many probably aren't cut out for that and it's probably hard to assess without past work.
I like the idea of this - work hard / you'll be rewarded, even if the current payment is meagre - BUT, I don't think that this is necessarily the case for the majority.
This guy struck it lucky. I'm not sure an exception makes the rule.
There was a great article in the new yorker a couple weeks ago about the current CEO of AOL and how he is building the largest team of journalists in the country (and possibly world). don't have it on hand at the moment but it was a great read.
I often think of Weblogs, Inc. as a sort of freak of startup nature. Very little funding, but the company had a huge impact, especially on its acquirer. AOL's core publishing technology platform is Blogsmith, Weblogs, Inc.'s home grown CMS, not to mention how Engadget, Autoblog and other influential Weblogs, Inc. blogs have given other AOLers insight into what good content looks like.
As Marshall mentions in the post, I'm wondering where the new minor leagues are. I'd guess just being a regular contributor to Hacker News might be as close as there is right now.