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The Awl

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theawl.com

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Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

The Awl is a New York-based blog that covers media, culture, and politics.

The site was founded in April 2009 by ex-Gawker writers Choire Sicha and Alex Balk and former Radar employee David Cho. The site has an irreverent tone similar to Gawker’s, though at its launch, it was intended as an alternative to Gawker’s emphasis on traffic, search-engine optimization and counterintuitive tone. Cho left for Grantland in 2011, and Sicha and Balk passed the day-to-day operations of the site on John Herrman and Matt Buchanan in 2014.

It is supported by advertising, and in June 2010, it announced plans to expand into a network of sites, which now includes the comedy focused site Splitsider and The Hairpin, a site focused on women. The network drew a combined 2 million monthly visitors in 2011. The website, which relies on contributions from various writers, has also begun a profit-sharing system where each month’s authors receive a small compensation.

Peers, allies, & competitors:

Gawker Media, The New York Observer, Capital New York, McSweeney's

Recent Nieman Lab coverage:

Jan. 17, 2018 / Laura Hazard Owen

HURRY UP BEFORE IT’S GONE, NEW YORK CITY: The Awl and The Hairpin are shutting down — EXPLOITATION, PERSONAL ESSAYS, BRANDS, INFLUENCERS, SCAMS, SNAPCHAT, SNAPCHAT IS WHERE BRANDS CAN EXPRESS THEMSELVES IN COOL WAYS, DUMB MONEY, NOBODY LEARNS, THEY’LL BE FINE EITHER WAY. Goodbye to The Awl, Awl Tags...

Aug. 30, 2017 / Laura Hazard Owen

Ev Williams on Medium’s Spotify-ish future, why publishers left, and why he changed his mind about ads — It can be tempting to write Medium off for dead. The company laid off a third of its staff earlier this year. The bigger-name publishers who migrated to Medium have left. (Goodbye to: The Ringer, Backchannel, The Awl, Pa...

June 23, 2016 / Laura Hazard Owen

“Medium’s team did everything”: How 5 publishers transitioned their sites to Medium — “Even 15 years after Blogger, it’s still hard to publish on the internet,” a Medium executive told a group of publishers this past spring. Medium has now made it its mission to make publishing easier: A...

April 8, 2016 / Laura Hazard Owen

No garbage fires here: Medium advances its quest to gentrify the world of Internet publishing — WordPress, to steal a phrase from Marie Kondo, does not spark joy. When I log in, I see a series of modules that I never use and 11 plugins that need updating. Medium wants to free us from this unsightly digital mess. At...

April 5, 2016 / Laura Hazard Owen

Medium gives publishers new ways to make money; Instant Articles and AMP support are on the way — Medium announced a new set of tools for publishers on Tuesday. The features, which will roll out on Thursday, have attracted a number of mostly smaller existing publishers — including The Awl and The Hairpin, Pacific S...

All Lab posts on The Awl »

Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

All Mediagazer posts on The Awl »

Primary author: Mark Coddington. Main text last updated: March 6, 2014.

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