The Awl Inflection Point ⇥ todayintabs.com
Some ex-writers from Kotaku launched a new site:
Welcome to Aftermath, a worker-owned, reader-supported news site covering video games, the internet, and the cultures that surround them.
Aftermath exists in the same realm as Defector and the Autopian, both of which were created by ex-G/O Media writers and editors.
A brief aside: like Defector, Aftermath is built on Alley’s Lede stack, which builds upon a WordPress base with paid subscriptions, bulk email, and Vox Media’s Coral comments system. For its part, Vox announced earlier this year that it would be moving off Chorus and onto WordPress. WordPress is solidifying its place as the default CMS for the web. Aside over.
When the platforms turned off the click hose and hedge fund herbs started buying the tattered remnants of 2010-era blog networks to chop them up for scrap, I wondered when we’d reach the Awl inflection point, where the tools to start a subscription-funded blog were cheap enough and the pool of unemployed reporter goblins was deep enough to start generating a new cohort of publications like this. I think I’m ready to say it’s now, and personally I love to see it.
I welcome this new era of worker-owned independent media outlets built mostly on the success of writers. The only reason I used to read Deadspin was because of who wrote for it; when they moved, so did I. And now they can be supported directly by a core group of readers who trust them.