Arianna Huffington has probably uttered the phrase "great journalism" in public a thousand times since she took over AOL in February. But the recently-departed editor of AOL's most successful content site, Engadget, thinks greater journalism is possible elsewhere.
That editor, Joshua Topolsky, is joining SB Nation, a newish publisher of sites for sports fans, to launch a technology news site sometime this fall. And Topolsky isn't the only Engadget editor signing onto the venture: According to David Carr, he'll be bringing up to eight of his former staffers with him, leaving Engadget effectively gutted.
In explaining his decision, Topolsky offered a rationale clearly intended as an indictment of his former employer:
SB Nation believes in real, independent journalism and the potential for new media to serve as an answer and antidote to big publishing houses and SEO spam -- a point we couldn’t be more aligned on....This isn’t tabloid page grabbing or content farming -- it’s news and insight by and for a passionate and informed group of people.
The adoption of "The AOL Way," a metrics-driven strategy for building pageviews by obsessively reacting to trends in search, prompted at least one Engadget editor to bolt. Huffington, since coming aboard, has made it clear the AOL Way is no longer the blueprint, but then her site has long engaged in its own forms of search-baiting and pageview juicing.
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Dislosure: For the umpteenth time, I worked at AOL before joining Forbes last October.
