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Ugh. This looks painful http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way#-16

No wonder he quit. Any self-respecting writer wouldn't want to stay on.

Most full-time, high volume writers or journalists are used to this - it's not a question of self respect any more than questioning the self respect of someone who works in WalMart. You can still take pride in (and enjoy) your work even if it's under someone else's direction.

On a much smaller scale, I, a small-time 'problogger', do the same. Monitoring trends, tracking things I know will be coming up.. For example, it's in my calendar that next Thursday it'll be 18 years since Matz started to develop Ruby - you can be sure I'll be writing about it ;-)

Sure, it certainly helps to pay attention to trends and write on what people care about, but when your entire operation is centered around writing articles with the sole intention of attracting page views, you know there's something wrong. While I agree that you can take pride in your work even under someone else's direction, AOL's plan seems to involve mindless "slave-driven" writing - something I'm sure Paul is sick of and that I would be sick of as well.

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